BackgroundThe subfamily Stevardiinae is a diverse and widely distributed clade of freshwater fishes from South and Central America, commonly known as “tetras” (Characidae). The group was named “clade A” when first proposed as a monophyletic unit of Characidae and later designated as a subfamily. Stevardiinae includes 48 genera and around 310 valid species with many species presenting inseminating reproductive strategy. No global hypothesis of relationships is available for this group and currently many genera are listed as incertae sedis or are suspected to be non-monophyletic.ResultsWe present a molecular phylogeny with the largest number of stevardiine species analyzed so far, including 355 samples representing 153 putative species distributed in 32 genera, to test the group’s monophyly and internal relationships. The phylogeny was inferred using DNA sequence data from seven gene fragments (mtDNA: 12S, 16S and COI; nuclear: RAG1, RAG2, MYH6 and PTR). The results support the Stevardiinae as a monophyletic group and a detailed hypothesis of the internal relationships for this subfamily.ConclusionsA revised classification based on the molecular phylogeny is proposed that includes seven tribes and also defines monophyletic genera, including a resurrected genus Eretmobrycon, and new definitions for Diapoma, Hemibrycon, Bryconamericus sensu stricto, and Knodus sensu stricto, placing some small genera as junior synonyms. Inseminating species are distributed in several clades suggesting that reproductive strategy is evolutionarily labile in this group of fishes.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0403-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
It is widely recognized that physical landscapes can shape genetic variation within and between populations. However, it is not well understood how riverscapes, with their complex architectures, affect patterns of neutral genetic diversity. Using a spatially explicit agent-based modeling (ABM) approach, we evaluate the genetic consequences of dendritic river shapes on local population structure. We disentangle the relative contribution of specific river properties to observed patterns of genetic variation by evaluating how different branching architectures and downstream flow regimes affect the genetic structure of populations situated within river networks. Irrespective of the river length, our results illustrate that the extent of river branching, confluence position, and levels of asymmetric downstream migration dictate patterns of genetic variation in riverine populations. Comparisons between simple and highly branched rivers show a 20-fold increase in the overall genetic diversity and a sevenfold increase in the genetic differentiation between local populations. Given that most rivers have complex architectures, these results highlight the importance of incorporating riverscape information into evolutionary models of aquatic species and could help explain why riverine fishes represent a disproportionately large amount of global vertebrate diversity per unit of habitable area.
Aim Patterns of genetic variation within freshwater fish populations may reflect the historical impact of climate change on either sea-level or environmental conditions. Past sea-level changes enlarged palaeodrainages and so connected currently isolated rivers, whereas changes in environmental conditions reduced forest cover and may have constrained the movement of fish specialized to this habitat. We assayed genetic variation in Hollandichthys multifasciatus, a freshwater fish endemic to the Atlantic Forest of coastal Brazil, to test the relative importance of these factors in shaping current patterns of genetic divergence.Location River drainages along the south-eastern Brazilian coast.Methods A GIS was used to reconstruct palaeodrainages during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Niche modelling was used to infer areas of stability for the southern Atlantic Forest sensu stricto (present and LGM). The contribution of river connections inside or outside areas of stability was evaluated using a calibrated phylogeny, analyses of molecular variance, and Bayesian skyline plots from two mtDNA loci.Results Analyses of 182 individuals from 26 populations and 12 palaeodrainages indicated that structure associated with palaeodrainages explains 75% of the genetic variation among populations, with estimated divergence times occurring within the Pleistocene. The variation explained by palaeodrainages and estimated population sizes was unrelated to the ecological stability of the region.Main conclusions This study demonstrates the importance of Pleistocene palaeodrainages in structuring genetic divergence patterns. The analyses suggest that past connections due to sea-level retreat played a significant role in the diversification of the ichthyofauna along the Brazilian coastal drainages. Moreover, the lack of a signature of habitat stability in structuring genetic variation suggests that refugia may be less important in structuring genetic diversity for freshwater species than for terrestrial species. In addition, our work highlights the utility of a GIS-based approach to recover past connections among coastal basins. Understanding these connections is crucial for studying diversification of riverine organisms and for identifying areas of conservation priority.
The eastern coastal basins of Brazil are a series of small and isolated rivers that drain directly into the Atlantic Ocean. During the Pleistocene, sea-level retreat caused by glaciations exposed the continental shelf, resulting in enlarged paleodrainages that connected rivers that are isolated today. Using Geographic Information System (GIS), we infer the distribution of these paleodrainages, and their properties for the east Brazilian coast. Specifically, using elevation/bathymetric data for the largest sea-level retreats during the Pleistocene, the paleodrainages, their area and the number of contemporary basins connected by each palaeodrainage, was inferred. For the 145 inferred paleodrainages, total paleodrainage area is strongly correlated with the contemporary area encompassed by each paleodrainage, as well as with the number of contemporary basins encompassed by a paleodrainage. Differences in the continental shelf exposure along the coast affected the degree of past connectivity among contemporary rivers. With our results freely available, we discuss how paleodrainages have tremendous utility in biological studies, especially in regions with limited geologic data. With respect to the diverse ichthyofauna of the Brazilian coast, and its high endemism, we highlight how the inferred paleodrainages provide a backdrop to test hypotheses about the effect of past riverine connectivity on diversity patterns.
The gills of fish have a great external contact surface and are particularly sensitive to chemical and physical changes in the aquatic environment. The aim of this study was to examine the histopathologic alterations in the gills of Astyanax fasciatus and Cyanocharax alburnus and to determine if there is a correlation between the severity of the alterations and environmental degradation and if this biological system can be used as a tool for evaluating water quality in monitoring programmes. The gills of 107 specimens of Astyanax fasciatus and 116 of Cyanocharax alburnus were collected seasonally and processed using routine histologic techniques for fixing and embedding in paraffin and staining of sections with haematoxylin and eosin. The main alterations observed in both species were alteration of the structure of the epithelium, vacuolisation, hyperplasia of the epithelium of the primary lamella, epithelial lifting, and alteration of the structure and occurrence of aneurysms in the secondary lamella. The locations Gasometer and F. do Celupa were the ones that showed the highest frequencies of moderate and severe alterations as the highest "histopathologic alterations index" means. The most severe alterations were found to be related to the most impacted environment, indicating the presence of stressors in the water.
Past shifts in connectivity in riverine environments (for example, sea-level changes) and the properties of current drainages can act as drivers of genetic structure and demographic processes in riverine population of fishes. However, it is unclear whether the same river properties that structure variation on recent timescales will also leave similar genomic signatures that reflect paleodrainage properties. By characterizing genetic structure in a freshwater fish species (Hollandichthys multifasciatus) from a system of basins along the Atlantic coast of Brazil we test for the effects of paleodrainages caused by sea-level changes during the Pleistocene. Given that the paleodrainage properties differ along the Brazilian coast, we also evaluate whether estimated genetic diversity within paleodrainages can be explained by past riverine properties (i.e., area and number of rivers in a paleodrainage). Our results demonstrate that genetic structure between populations is not just highly concordant with paleodrainages, but that differences in the genetic diversity among paleodrainages correspond to the joint effect of differences in the area encompassed by, and the number of rivers, within a paleodrainage. Our findings extend the influence of current riverine properties on genetic diversity to those associated with past paleodrainage properties. We discuss how these findings may explain the inconsistent support for paleodrainages in structuring divergence from different global regions and the importance of taking into account past conditions for understanding the high species diversity of freshwater fish that we currently observe in the world, and especially in the Neotropics.
Assessments of spatial and temporal congruency across taxa from genetic data provide insights into the extent to which similar processes structure communities. However, for coastal regions that are affected continuously by cyclical sea‐level changes over the Pleistocene, congruent interspecific response will not only depend upon codistributions, but also on similar dispersal histories among taxa. Here, we use SNPs to test for concordant genetic structure among four codistributed taxa of freshwater fishes (Teleostei: Characidae) along the Brazilian Atlantic coastal drainages. Based on population relationships and hierarchical genetic structure analyses, we identify all taxa share the same geographic structure suggesting the fish utilized common passages in the past to move between river basins. In contrast to this strong spatial concordance, model‐based estimates of divergence times indicate that despite common routes for dispersal, these passages were traversed by each of the taxa at different times resulting in varying degrees of genetic differentiation across barriers with most divergences dating to the Upper Pleistocene, even when accounting for divergence with gene flow. Interestingly, when this temporal dissonance is viewed through the lens of the species‐specific ecologies, it suggests that an ecological sieve influenced whether species dispersed readily, with an ecological generalist showing the highest propensity for historical dispersal among the isolated rivers of the Brazilian coast (i.e., the most recent divergence times and frequent gene flow estimated for barriers). We discuss how our findings, and in particular what the temporal dissonance, despite common geographic passages, suggest about past dispersal structuring coastal communities as a function of ecological and paleo‐landscape sieves.
The phylogenetic relationships among characids are complex with many genera remaining of uncertain systematic position inside the family. The genus Hollandichthys is one of these problematic genera. It has been considered as incertae sedis inside this family until two recently published phylogenies, one morphological and one molecular, arrived at alternative hypothesizes as to the relationships of Hollandichthys with Pseudochalceus or Rachoviscus, respectively. In this paper, we infer the phylogenetic relations of these taxa based on five genes (three mitochondrial - COI, ND2 and 16S; and two nuclear - Sia and Trop), totaling up to 2719 bp. The 41 analyzed species in the Characidae include four incertae sedis characid taxa once hypothesized as related to Hollandichthys, but never analyzed in a single phylogeny (Rachoviscus, Pseudochalceus, Nematocharax and Hyphessobrycon uruguayensis). Here we propose Rachoviscus as the sister-group of Hollandichthys, grouped in the large clade C previously defined, along with the remaining incertae sedis taxa studied here. In addition, we support the evidence that insemination evolved independently at least three times in the Characidae.
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