Can Lutjanus purpureus (South red snapper) be "legally" considered a red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus)?

Abstract

Red snappers (Lutjanus purpureus in Brazil and Lutjanus campechanus in USA and Gulf of Mexico) are both under clear effect of overfishing. Because of their high morphological similarity it has already been suggested that they could possibly be considered as a single species. To investigate the degree of similarity and the genetic structure of red snapper populations we constructed a common dataset of partial D-loop mtDNA sequences of L. purpureus from Brazil (Amapá, Pará and Maranhão) and L. campechanus from the Atlantic coast of the USA (Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi). Phylogenetic and population genetic analyses surprisingly depicted high similarity between L. campechanus and L. purpureus, compatible with the hypothesis of a single species of red snapper for the Western Atlantic Ocean. These preliminary but very curious findings open an important discussion regarding the legislation involved on the capture of this overexploited fish resources as well as regarding their taxonomy.

Population Structure of Lutjanus purpureus (Lutjanidae - Perciformes) on the Brazilian coast: further existence evidence of a single species of red snapper in the western Atlantic

“…Additionally, the primers Dloop-F-5'-ACTTTCATCGACGCTTGCA-3' and Dloop-R-5'GTGATCTTAGGAGTATAGGG-3' were used to isolate the hypervariable region described by Garber et al (2004), and thus permitting the analysis of practically the whole control region. Figure 2 shows the location of the hypervariable region sequenced by Garber et al (2004), and the fragments sequenced by Gomes et al (2008) and in the present study. The PCRs were conducted in a final volume of 25 µL, which included: 4µL of the mixture of , approximately 100 ng of the total DNA extracted from the sample, 0.25 µL of each primer (200 ng/µL), 0.2 µL of Taq DNA polymerase (5U/µL -Invitrogen) and sterile distilled water to complete the final reaction volume.…”

“…An automatic multiple alignment was then performed in the Clustal-X application (Thompson et al 1997), followed by a new visual inspection and correction of the insertions or deletions codification as necessary. Two databases were produced, the first covering the 810 bp of the mitochondrial control region identified in the Brazilian specimens of Gomes et al (2008) and Garber et al (2004), and the primers used in the present study. The phylogenetic relationships among haplotypes were evaluated through neighbor-joining analyses using MEGA 4.0 (Tamura et al 2007).…”

“…Recently, Gomes et al (2008) analyzed northern Brazilian populations of L. purpureus based on sequences of the mitochondrial control region, and found evidence of intense gene flow between populations, indicating the presence of a PHYLOGEOGRAPHY AND POPULATION STRUCTURE OF Lutjanus single genetic stock. Furthermore, comparisons with a second snapper species, Lutjanus campechanus revealed greater variation within than between populations, indicating a lack of phylogeographic structuring, and the probable existence of only a single species of red snapper in the western Atlantic, as suggested by Cervigón (1993).…”

“…In the present study, the mitochondrial control region was analyzed in order to evaluate the genetic structure and phylogeographic attributes of Brazilian populations of L. purpureus. In addition to the expansion of the analysis of Gomes et al (2008), in terms of the number and distribution of samples, a complementary analysis of the hypervariable portion of the control region included the sequences obtained from western Atlantic L. campechanus by Garber et al (2004).…”

Development of EPIC-PCR Markers for Lutjanus purpureus (Lutjanidae-Perciformes) and their Potential Applicability in Population Analyses

“…For North coast of Brazil, there is a single stock, with elevated levels of variation (Sousa-Júnior et al 2002, Gomes et al 2008.…”