Do colour-morphs of an amphidromous goby represent different species? Taxonomy of Lentipes (Gobiiformes) from Japan and Palawan, Philippines, with phylogenomic approaches

Abstract

We document four male colour morphs of the Indo-Pacific goby genus Lentipes in Japan and the Philippines. Despite distinctive colour patterns, males of the different morphs could not be distinguished by meristic or morphometric characters. In contrast, co-occurring females had very similar colouration and could not be sorted into different types. We observed that the four types are not distinguished by mitochondrial genome sequences. On the other hand, genome-wide SNPs analysis clearly separated the four types, suggesting that they indeed represent four independent lineages. We considered that the four lineages could have diverged recently, and therefore, the sorting of mitochondrial haplotypes may not have been completed yet. One of the four lineages is identified as L. armatus Sakai & Nakamura, 1979, and the other three are described in this study as new species: L. kijimuna sp. nov., L. bunagaya sp. nov., and L. palawanirufus sp. nov. We observed that males display their species-specific body colourations during courtship. Pre-zygotic isolation due to female preferences for different male body colours is probably the primary mechanism of reproductive isolation between the four species.

http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:95C19A65-8907-48F6-AA0B-2ACF711C0297

Key words:

• Amphidromy
• colouration
• ddRAD-seq
• genome-wide SNPs
• Gobiiformes
• goby
• Lentipes
• mitochondrial genome

Acknowledgements

Samplings and surveys in Palawan were conducted under a Memorandum of Agreement for joint research between Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) and Western Philippines University (WPU). We thank Elsa P. Manarpaac, Lota A. Creencia, Benjamin J. Gonzales (WPU), Jonathan Dorfan, Hiroyo Clemente (OIST), Filipina B. Sotto, and Joeppette J. Hermosilla (University of San Carlos) for their support of this collaboration. We are grateful to Nelson P. Devanadera, Nino Rey C. Estoya, Beth Lagrada, Aira Bayron, and Aiza Nunez (Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, PCSD) for providing Wildlife Gratuitous Permits (No. 2016-09, 2018-16) and Wildlife Export Certifications (No. 16-03, 2018-03); Lucena D. Demaala (Municipality of Narra), Lucilo R. Bayron (Puerto Princesa City), Rosalina Cañaveral (Barangay Estrella Village), and Macario Fabrigas (Barangay Binduyan) for providing Prior Informed Consent Certificates, and all local residents who supported our surveys. We appreciate Gento Shinohara, Masanori Nakae (NSMT), and Kei Miyamoto (Okinawa Churashima Foundation) for loan and registration of the specimens, Renny K. Hadiaty, Sopian Sauri (MZB), Zara Gabsi, Jonathan Pfliger, and Philippe Keith (MNHN) for their supports during we visited and investigated the collections, Hidenori Yoshigou (Chugai Technos), Nozomi Hanahara (Okinawa Churashima Foundation), and Daiki Ito (University of the Ryukyus) for providing valuable information and/or for their supports to the fieldwork, Konstantin Khalturin, Mariia Khalturina, Miyuki Kanda, and Mayumi Kawamitsu (OIST) for their support to the library preparation and sequencing for mitochondrial DNA analysis, Ayşe Haruka Oshima Açıkbaş and Pei Chen King (OIST) for useful suggestions to improve the manuscript, staff and customers of Aquarius Divers (the late Takumi Shiraishi, Kaori Koromo, Yoshio Suzuki, and Naoshi Suzuki) for providing valuable information on the distribution of Lentipes in Cebu, Yasushi Sadoyama (Okinawa, Japan) for providing a picture, and Tetsuo Yoshino (Okinawa Churashima Foundation) for his useful advice and support to our study. We would like to thank all three reviewers and the editors for their valuable comments to improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772000.2021.1971792

Associate Editor: Kevin Conway

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 24780200 and 16K07492 and by the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University.