Molecular phylogenetics and evolutionary history of ariid catfishes revisited: a comprehensive sampling

Abstract

Background: Ariids or sea catfishes are one of the two otophysan fish families (out of about 67 families in four orders) that inhabit mainly marine and brackish waters (although some species occur strictly in fresh waters). The group includes over 150 species placed in ~29 genera and two subfamilies (Galeichthyinae and Ariinae). Despite their global distribution, ariids are largely restricted to the continental shelves due in part to their specialized reproductive behavior (i.e., oral incubation). Thus, among marine fishes, ariids offer an excellent opportunity for inferring historical biogeographic scenarios. Phylogenetic hypotheses available for ariids have focused on restricted geographic areas and comprehensive phylogenies are still missing. This study inferred phylogenetic hypotheses for 123 ariid species in 28 genera from different biogeographic provinces using both mitochondrial and nuclear sequences (up to ~4 kb).

Evolution of opercle bone shape along a macrohabitat gradient: species identification using mtDNAand geometric morphometric analyses in neotropical sea catfishes (Ariidae)

“…Sequence traces (available on NCBI, accession numbers KX500399‐KX500661) were inspected for quality control, removing poor‐quality bases and/or ambiguous base calls using CodonCode Aligner v.3.7.1.1 (CodonCode, Dedham, MA). These were aligned using MAFFT v.7 (Katoh and Standley 2013) together with a reference dataset (Betancur‐R 2009) containing 281 ATPase 8/6 sequences from 129 ariid species distributed worldwide. This reference dataset was kindly provided by R. Betancur‐R.…”

“…Today the Siluriformes consist of more than 3000 species [www.fishbase.org, version 01/2016]) in 33 “families”, with most of the catfish species being primary freshwater inhabitants (Teugels 1996). Some “families” contain species with a preference for brackish habitats, such as the Loricariidae and Pimelodidae (Betancur‐R 2009, 2010), but only two of the 33 “families” – including the widely distributed Ariidae – can be characterized as primarily marine. Nonetheless, some members of the Ariidae have secondarily colonized freshwater habitats, so that Ariidae inhabit the coastal waters and near‐coastal rivers and lakes of most tropical and subtropical regions worldwide (Sullivan et al.…”

Structure and Possible Functions of Constant-Frequency Calls in Ariopsis seemanni (Osteichthyes, Ariidae)

“…Further, fish were exposed to an artificial light/dark (LD) cycle of 12∶12 h by using a digital clock timer and a set of standard neon tubes. Total body lengths (TL, for definition see [29]) of our specimens of Ariopsis seemanni ([17], [30]) were around 12 cm, corresponding to approximately one third of the adult size [31].…”

“…In the present study, the Tete sea catfish ( Ariopsis seemanni), a close relative of A. felis (for genetic distance see [17]), was selected for further investigation of the use of sound production for echolocation purposes in Osteichthyes. A. seemanni is common in coastal marine and brackish waters of Central and South America from Mexico to Peru [18].…”

Forked Tongues Revisited: Molecular Apomorphies Support Morphological Hypotheses of Squamate Evolution

“…This approach reveals novel insights into data incongruence currently plaguing squamate phylogeny, with direct implications for other scenarios of phylogenetic incongruence. I NCONGRUENCE between molecular and morphological-based phylogenetic hypotheses have been reported across a wide range of taxa, including woodcreepers (Irestedt et al, 2004), cetaceans and artiodactylans (O'Leary et al, 2003;O'Leary and Gatesy, 2008), placental mammals (Lee and Camens, 2009), haplosporidians (Burreson and Reece, 2006), pickerelweed (Graham et al, 1998), hexapods (Bitsch et al, 2004), fishes (Betancur-R., 2009), and squamates (Vidal and Hedges, 2005;Losos et al, 2012). Numerous aspects of analyses (e.g., taxon sampling, outgroup selection, number and types of characters/genes included, chosen method of analysis, species vs. gene trees) may help explain the discordance between phylogenies derived from these different data types; however, the issue still receives considerable attention in the literature, and deservedly so, as it is largely unresolved (Hermsen and Hendricks, 2008;Lee and Camens, 2009;Losos et al, 2012).…”