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Mastacembelid eels support lake tanganyika as an evolutionary hotspot of diversification

Brown, KJ; Rüber, L; Bills, R; Day, JJ; (2010) Mastacembelid eels support lake tanganyika as an evolutionary hotspot of diversification. BMC Evolutionary Biology , 10 , Article 188. 10.1186/1471-2148-10-188. Green open access

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[thumbnail of Table S1. Species, collection data and GenBank accession numbers for samples used in phylogenetic analyses.]
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[thumbnail of Phylogenetic relationships of African mastacembelid eels inferred from the Cytochrome b (Cyt b) dataset, generated using Bayesian inference]
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[thumbnail of Phylogenetic relationships of African mastacembelid eels inferred from the Cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (CO1) dataset, generated using Bayesian inference]
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[thumbnail of Phylogenetic relationships of African mastacembelid eels inferred from two introns of ribosomal S7, generated using Bayesian inference]
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Abstract

Background. Lake Tanganyika (LT) is the oldest of the African Rift Lakes and is one of the richest freshwater ecosystems on Earth, with high levels of faunal diversity and endemism. The endemic species flocks that occur in this lake, such as cichlid fishes, gastropods, catfish and crabs, provide unique comparative systems for the study of patterns and processes of speciation. Mastacembelid eels (Teleostei: Mastacembelidae) are a predominately riverine family of freshwater fish, occurring across Africa and Asia, but which also form a small species flock in LT. Methods. Including 25 species across Africa, plus Asian representatives as outgroups, we present the first molecular phylogenetic analysis for the group, focusing particularly on the evolutionary history and biodiversity of LT mastacembelid eels. A combined matrix of nuclear and mitochondrial genes based on 3118 bp are analysed implementing different phylogenetic methods, including Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood. Results. LT Mastacembelus are recovered as monophyletic, and analyses reveal the rapid diversification of five main LT lineages. Relaxed molecular clock dates provide age estimates for the LT flock at ∼7-8 Myr, indicating intralacustrine diversification, with further speciation events coinciding with periods of lower lake level. Our analyses also reveal as yet undescribed diversity of lacustrine and riverine species. A Southern-Eastern African clade, that is younger than the LT flock, is also recovered, while West African taxa are basal members of the African mastacembelid clade. Conclusions. That the LT species flock of mastacembelid eels appears to have colonised and immediately diversified soon after the formation of the lake, supports the view of LT as an evolutionary hotspot of diversification. We find evidence for biogeographic clades mirroring a similar pattern to other ichthyological faunas. In addition, our analyses also highlight a split of African and Asian mastacembelid eels at ∼19 Myr that is considerably younger than the split between their associated continents, suggesting a dispersal scenario for their current distribution. © 2010 Brown et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Type: Article
Title: Mastacembelid eels support lake tanganyika as an evolutionary hotspot of diversification
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/1471-2148-10-188
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-10-188
Language: English
Additional information: © 2010 Brown et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/87879
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