Cryptic biodiversity in the freshwater fishes of the Kimberley endemism hotspot, northwestern Australia

Publication date: Available online 25 June 2018Source: Molecular Phylogenetics and EvolutionAuthor(s): James J. Shelley, Stephen E. Swearer, Mark Adams, Tim Dempster, Matthew C. Le Feuvre, Michael P. Hammer, Peter J. UnmackAbstractThe prevalence of unrecognised cryptic species impairs biodiversity estimates, clouds biological research and hinders conservation planning. As the rate of cryptic species detection increases globally, research is needed to determine how frequent cryptic species are, whether they are more common in given management regions, and whether these patterns are consistent across taxonomic groups. The Kimberley region in remote northwestern Australia harbours some of the most speciose, and morphologically and functionally diverse, endemic animal and plant communities on the continent. The rugged and changeable landscape also appears to contain a large proportion of cryptic terrestrial species, raising the question of whether similar patterns are also found among aquatic taxa, which have yet to be studied using integrative systematic approaches. If true, then the actual levels of aquatic biodiversity are yet to be fully realised. Here we conducted a molecular assessment of where species boundaries may exist in the Kimberley regions’ most speciose freshwater fish family, the Terapontidae (grunters), with a combined morphological assessment of the regions’ most speciose terapontid genus, Syncomistes. Assessment of nuclear markers (54 allozyme loci), sequen...

Source: Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution - July 10, 2018 Category: Molecular Biology Source Type: research