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Sympatric morphotypes of the restricted-range Tashan Cave Garra: distinct species or a case of phenotypic plasticity?

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Abstract

Among Tashan cave barb Garra tashanensis inhabiting a small cave in southwest Iran, two mental disc (sucking mouth disc) forms were observed. To assess their phylogenetic relationships, disc-less and disc-bearing individuals were analyzed using mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) partial DNA sequences. Both mental disc forms nested within one clade with absolute bootstrap support (BS = 100), and the genetic distances between the disc-bearing and disc-less individuals (0.3–0.8%) were considerably lower than inter-species mtDNA sequence distances reported among members of the genus Garra; further, most species delimitation algorithms used here showed disc-bearing and disc-less Tashan cave barbs to be members of a single taxonomic unit. Hence, the observed mental disc variation was not inferred to be a taxonomic feature or a consequence of character displacement. Instead, it was inferred to be a case of character release to diversify among ecological niches in the limited subterranean habitat or a case of relaxed selection, which should be clarified in detail in follow-up ecological and population genetic studies.

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Data availability

All sequences and their complementary data related to this study are available under GenBank accession numbers: ON203035-ON203041 and under BOLD TASH project.

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Acknowledgements

This work is dedicated to Mesdames Madeleine Drouin and Böyük-Khanim Ahmadi Segherloo. The authors thank Farokh Shirali of the Bahbahan Bureau of Environment and Mohammad Taromi of the Qazvin Kavoshgaran Caving club, who assisted the authors for sampling. We also thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on a previous version of our manuscript. This work was supported by a NSERC (Canada) Discovery grant (http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca) to Louis Bernatchez, a grant from the Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) Species Conservation Fund (Project 172514955; https://www.speciesconservation.org) and grant number 688MIGRD94 to Iraj Hashemzadeh Segherloo by ShahreKord University (www.sku.ac.ir), and the University of Basrah. Sampling procedures comply with the current laws of Islamic Republic of Iran.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Natural Resources and Earth Sciences, Department of Fisheries Sciences, ShahreKord University, Shahr-e-Kord, Iran

    Iraj Hashemzadeh Segherloo & Sajad Najafi Chaloshtory

  2. Institut de Biologie Intégrative et des Systèmes (IBIS), Université Laval, Québec, G1V 0A6, Canada

    Iraj Hashemzadeh Segherloo, Seyedeh Narjes Tabatabaei, Gabriel Piette-Lauziere & Louis Bernatchez

  3. Department of Marine Biology, Marine Science Center, University of Basrah, Basrah, Iraq

    Murtada D. Naser & Amaal Gh. Yasser

  4. School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, QLD, 4111, Australia

    Murtada D. Naser & Amaal Gh. Yasser

  5. Radpa Mountaineering and Rock Climbing Club, Khuzestan, Iran

    Amirhossein Mashtizadeh

  6. Department of Environment, Wildlife Protection and Management Bureau, Natural Environment Division, Hakim Highway, Pardisan Eco-Park, Tehran, Iran

    Amirmohammad Elmi & Omid Sedighi

  7. Khuzestan Province Department of Environment, Ahvaz, Iran

    Alieh Changizi

  8. Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA

    Eric Hallerman

Authors
  1. Iraj Hashemzadeh Segherloo
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  2. Sajad Najafi Chaloshtory
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  10. Alieh Changizi
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  11. Eric Hallerman
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  12. Louis Bernatchez
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Iraj Hashemzadeh Segherloo.

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The ethical aspects and procedures applied in this research were approved by the education and research board of the Natural Resources and Earth Sciences Faculty, Shahrekord University.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Hashemzadeh Segherloo, I., Najafi Chaloshtory, S., Naser, M.D. et al. Sympatric morphotypes of the restricted-range Tashan Cave Garra: distinct species or a case of phenotypic plasticity?. Environ Biol Fish 105, 1251–1260 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-022-01329-2

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