Mitochondrial DNA Phylogeny of the Family Cichlidae: Monophyly and Fast Molecular Evolution of the Neotropical Assemblage

Abstract

A mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) phylogeny of cichlid fish is presented for the most taxonomically inclusive data set compiled to date (64 taxa). 16S rDNA data establish with confidence relationships among major lineages of cichlids, with a general pattern congruent with previous morphological studies and less inclusive molecular phylogenies based on nuclear genes. Cichlids from Madagascar and India are the most basal groups of the family Cichlidae and sister to African-Neotropical cichlids. The cichlid phylogeny suggests drift-vicariance events, consistent with the fragmentation of Gondwana, to explain current biogeographic distributions. Important phylogenetic findings include the placement of the controversial genus Heterochromis basal among African cichlids, the South American genus Retroculus as the most basal taxon of the Neotropical cichlid assemblage, and the close relationship of the Neotropical genera Cichla with Astronotus rather than with the crenicichlines. Based on a large number of South American genera, the Neotropical cichlids are defined as a monophyletic assemblage and shown to harbor significantly higher levels of genetic variation than their African counterparts. Relative rate tests suggest that Neotropical cichlids have experienced accelerated rates of molecular evolution. But these high evolutionary rates were significantly higher among geophagine cichlids.

The oldest fossil cichlids (Teleostei: Perciformes): indication of a 45 million-year-old species flock

“…Myers 1949;Greenwood 1994), which indicates that marine waters are not a barrier to cichlid dispersal. Farias et al (1999) also supported an Early Cretaceous origin based on a sister-group relationship between African and neotropical taxa, each of which formed a monophyletic group in their analysis. However, regardless of whether the African cichlids are a monophyletic group or are paraphyletic (e.g.…”

“…Recent molecular work has shown the super-species £ocks in Lakes Victoria and Malawi to be monophyletic (Meyer 1993;Booton et al 1999), but the relationships of many other cichlids are still not well known (Korn¢eld & Parker 1997), although new information is continually being added (e.g. Streelman et al 1998;Farias et al 1999). There has been extensive research on the phylogenetic relationships, behaviour, evolution and all aspects of cichlid biology by many authors.…”

Sciaenidae fish of the Caeté River estuary, Northern Brazil: mitochondrial DNA suggests explosive radiation for the Western Atlantic assemblage

“…To test the monophyly of the Sciaenidae group from the Caeté estuary, phylogenetic trees were generated which included members of six other Perciformes families, the 16S sequences needed being retrieved from the GenBank for species of Nototheniidae (Richie et al;1997), Cichlidae (Farias et al, 1999), Centropomidae (Tringali et al, 1999), Scaridae (Streelman et al, 2002); Sparidae (Hanel and Sturmbauer, 2000) and Serranidae (Craig et al, 2001). Alternate tree topologies were compared statistically using the topology-dependent tail permutation tests (T-PTP) with 1000 replicates (Archie, 1989;Faith, 1991).…”

Phylogenetic analysis of flatfish (Order Pleuronectiformes) based on mitochondrial 16s rDNA sequences

“…We have also taken data from the GenBank, both to obtain a better representation of some families as well as to get some insight into genetic differentiation between putative assemblages within some species of the group. For this analysis we have chosen the mtDNA 16S rRNA gene due to its effectiveness in previous studies for establishing the evolutionary relationships of lineages of similar divergence in fish (Alves-Gómes et al, 1995;Farias et al, 1999;Tinti et al, 1999;Tringali et al, 1999;Hanel and Sturmbauer, 2000), and also because it is technically easy to obtain sequence information by selective gene amplification with universal primers (Brown, 1985).…”