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Genetic diversity and connectivity remain high in Holothuria polii (Delle Chiaje 1823) across a coastal lagoon-open sea environmental gradient
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Coastal lagoons represent habitats with widely
heterogeneous environmental conditions, particularly as
regards salinity and temperature,which fluctuate in both space
and time. These characteristics suggest that physical and
ecological factors could contribute to the genetic divergence
among populations occurring in coastal lagoon and opencoast
environments. This study investigates the genetic
structure of Holothuria polii at a micro-geographic scale
across theMar Menor coastal lagoon and nearbymarine areas,
estimating the mitochondrial DNA variation in two gene
fragments, cytochrome oxidase I (COI) and 16S rRNA (16S).
Dataset of mitochondrial sequences was also used to test
the influence of environmental differences between coastal
lagoon andmarine waters on population genetic structure. All
sampled locations exhibited high levels of haplotype diversity
and low values of nucleotide diversity. Both genes showed
contrasting signals of genetic differentiation (non-significant
differences using COI and slight differences using 16S, which
could due to different mutation rates or to differential number
of exclusive haplotypes. We detected an excess of recent
mutations and exclusive haplotypes, which can be generated
as a result of population growth. However, selective processes
can be also acting on the gene markers used; highly significant
generalized additive models have been obtained considering
genetic data from16S gene and independent variables such as
temperature and salinity.
Description
Keywords
Coastal lagoon Gene flow Genetic diversity Holothuria polii Mitochondrial DNA Selection Generalized additive models (GAMs)
Citation
Publisher
Springer Verlag