Abstract
Foskett Spring is a small isolated desert spring in the Warner Basin of Oregon containing an undescribed subspecies of speckled dace protected under the US Endangered Species Act. Uncertainty regarding the taxonomic status of Foskett dace has raised questions about their evolutionary relationship to other more abundant populations in the Warner Basin. To address these questions, we sequenced 1,982 base pairs (bp) of the ND2 and cyt-b genes of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) for 85 fish from Foskett Spring, the surrounding Warner Basin, and the adjacent Goose Lake Basin. We observed 58 unique mtDNA haplotypes defined by 96 bp substitutions in both genes. MtDNA sequences were highly divergent and reciprocally monophyletic between dace from the Warner and Goose Lake Basins, with sequence divergences (5 and 3% at ND2 and cyt-b, respectively) in the range usually observed between fish species. In contrast, mean sequence divergence between Foskett dace and other Warner Basin populations was less than 1%, with no evidence of reciprocal monophyly among mtDNA lineages. These results indicate that Foskett dace and other populations in the Warner Basin are approximately equally diverged from one another evolutionarily, suggesting similar times of divergence since the late Pleistocene. We believe further studies are needed to determine if rapid evolution of novel traits have occurred in dace inhabiting the unique ecological setting of Foskett Spring during the past 10,000 years.
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Acknowledgments
Funding for this project was provided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. D. Campton provided valuable input on development of this project. We would like to thank C. W. Kilpatrick, D. Markle, T. Dowling, M. Pfrender, and C. Hurt for assistance with laboratory methods and data analysis. J. Baumsteiger, C. Allen, R. White, A. Mauer, A. Munhall, and S. Reid collected samples used in this study. D. Campton, P. Crandell, D. Markle, and two anonymous reviewers provided critical review and comments that greatly improved this paper. The findings and conclusions in the article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
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Ardren, W.R., Baumsteiger, J. & Allen, C.S. Genetic analysis and uncertain taxonomic status of threatened Foskett Spring speckled dace. Conserv Genet 11, 1299–1315 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-009-9959-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-009-9959-0