Lack of population genetic differentiation of a marine ovoviviparous fish Sebastes schlegelii in Northwestern Pacific

Abstract

Sebastes schlegelii is one of the fishes that aggregate around drifting seaweed during early development. To examine the population genetic structure of S. schlegelii, a 452-bp fragment of the mtDNA control region was sequenced and used to interpret life history characteristics and larval dispersal strategy. Two-hundred and twenty-one individuals from 13 sites across the entire range of S. schlegelii in China, Japan and Korea were analyzed. A neighbor-joining tree and network showed that there were no significant genealogical structures corresponding to sampling locations. AMOVA, pair-wise F_ST and exact test revealed no significant genetic differentiation among locations. The migration rate among locations was high based on the result of LAMARC. We conclude that larval dispersal with drifting seaweed and the current environmental factors may play an important role in shaping the contemporary phylogeographic pattern and genetic homogeneity of S. schlegelii.

• Control region
• drifting seaweed
• genetic structure
• larval dispersal
• Sebastes schlegelii

Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Zhiqiang Jiang, Mr. Liyuan Li, Mr. Bangfu Wei, Mr. Peiting Liu and Mr. Haibin Jiang for their help in collecting the samples. We are also grateful to Prof. Brian Bowen, Dr. Lorenz Hauser and two anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback and language improvements. The present study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41176117 and No. 31172447) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (201122005).

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.