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Molecular phylogeny of the blind cavefish Phreatichthys andruzzii and Garra barreimiae within the family Cyprinidae

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Abstract

The phylogenetic relationships of two cavefish, Phreatichthys andruzzii and Garra barreimiae, belonging to the family Cyprinidae, were investigated by sequencing the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. These cavefish species are native to Somalia (eastern Africa) and Oman (southeastern Arabian peninsula), respectively, and so far no molecular support to their taxonomy and phylogenetic position was ever provided. The analysis of cytochrome b sequences showed that the species are monophyletic taxa, closely related to each other and to other species of the genus Garra. Molecular clock calculations allowed to date the origin of these hypogaean species back to the Plio-Pleistocene and support the hypothesis that African cyprinids originated from Miocenic immigrations of Asian ancestors.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to H. Wilkens of Hamburg University (Germany) for supplying living specimens of G. barreimiae and to F. Krupp of Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum of Frankfurt a.M. (Germany) for useful information on G. barreimiae sampling dates and localities. We also thank F. Fontana and M. Chicca (Dept. of Evolutionary Biology, Ferrara University I, Italy) for their valuable comments and suggestions on this version of the text. Special thanks to A. Romero (Dept. of Biological Sciences, Arkansas State University, USA) and to one anonymous referee for providing valuable criticisms on a previous draft of the manuscript.

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  1. Licia Colli

    Present address: Istituto di Zootecnica, Università Cattolica del S. Cuore di Piacenza, Via Emilia Parmense 84, I-29100, Piacenza, Italy

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Biologia Evolutiva e Funzionale, Università di Parma, Via G.P. Usberti 11/a, I-43100, Parma, Italy

    Licia Colli, Gilberto Gandolfi & James Tagliavini

  2. Dipartimento di Biologia Animale e Genetica, Università di Firenze, Via Romana 7-25, I-50125, Firenze, Italy

    Annalisa Paglianti & Roberto Berti

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  1. Licia Colli
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Correspondence to Licia Colli.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 1 Alphabetical list of cyprinid species included in the present study and NCBI-GenBank sequences Accession Numbers. Species distribution area are as described in Fish Base (2006)
Full size table

Appendix 2

Matrix of pairwise distances calculated as proportion of differences between sequences (lower diagonal). The species were ordered according to NJ tree topology to maintain the subdivision into the five major clades detected by phylogenetic analyses. The upper diagonal values are molecular clock estimates of Time to The Most Recent Common Ancestor for different clades and sub-clades. See the text for further details.

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Colli, L., Paglianti, A., Berti, R. et al. Molecular phylogeny of the blind cavefish Phreatichthys andruzzii and Garra barreimiae within the family Cyprinidae. Environ Biol Fish 84, 95–107 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-008-9393-z

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