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Abstract
The genus Iksookimia contains six species of primary freshwater fishes that are endemic to South Korea. Previous phylogenetic studies, based on DNA sequence data from three or fewer loci, have suggested non-monophyly of the genus, providing inconsistent resolutions of the relationships of Iksookimia. Our coalescent and concatenation-based phylogenetic analyses, utilizing seven unlinked nuclear-encoded genes, strongly supported Iksookimia as a monophyletic group, emphasizing the importance of multi-locus data in investigating complicated phylogenetic relationships. A relaxed molecular clock analysis using fossil calibrations, indicated that the origin of the major lineages of Iksookimia occurred between ∼12 to 5 Ma, which is consistent with the Miocene uplift of the Taebaek and Sobaek Mountains and the Miocene activation of the major south-eastern faults. These palaeogeographic events may have served as vicariant events in the diversification of Iksookimia.
Acknowledgements
This study represents a chapter in Y-SK's dissertation, which was submitted in partial fulfilment of the PhD degree, awarded by the Division of EcoScience at the Ewha Womans University. We thank members of the Molecular Ecology Lab at the Ewha Womans University for their support. Comments from Thomas Near (Yale University), Andrew Simons (University of Minnesota), two anonymous reviewers and the Editor greatly improved the manuscript. Y-SK and Y-JW would like to send a special thank you to Sang-Don Lee, Yuseop Kim and Jongwoo Jung (Ewha Womans University) for their helpful advice during the study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Supplemental data
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2017.1340912.
