Molecular Phylogeny and Biogeographic History of the Armored Neotropical Catfish Subfamilies Hypoptopomatinae, Neoplecostominae and Otothyrinae (Siluriformes: Loricariidae)

Abstract

The main objectives of this study are estimate a species-dense, time-calibrated molecular phylogeny of Hypoptopomatinae, Neoplecostominae, and Otothyrinae, which together comprise a group of armoured catfishes that is widely distributed across South America, to place the origin of major clades in time and space, and to demonstrate the role of river capture on patterns of diversification in these taxa. We used maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods to estimate a time-calibrated phylogeny of 115 loricariid species, using three mitochondrial and one nuclear genes to generate a matrix of 4,500 base pairs, and used parametric biogeographic analyses to estimate ancestral geographic ranges and to infer the effects of river capture events on the geographic distributions of these taxa. Our analysis recovered Hypoptopomatinae, Neoplecostominae, and Otothyrinae as monophyletic with strong statistical support, and Neoplecostominae as more closely related to Otothyrinae than to Hypoptopomatinae. Our time-calibrated phylogeny and ancestral-area estimations indicate an origin of Hypoptopomatinae, Neoplecostominae, and Otothyrinae during the Lower Eocene in the Atlantic Coastal Drainages, from which it is possible to infer several dispersal events to adjacent river basins during the Neogene. In conclusion we infer a strong influence of river capture in: (1) the accumulation of modern clade species-richness values; (2) the formation of the modern basin-wide species assemblages, and (3) the presence of many low-diversity, early-branching lineages restricted to the Atlantic Coastal Drainages. We further infer the importance of headwater stream capture and marine transgressions in shaping patterns in the distributions of Hypoptopomatinae, Neoplecostominae and Otothyrinae throughout South America.

Biogeography of Amazonian fishes: deconstructing river basins as biogeographic units

“…We do not concur entirely with that point of view, insofar as the original idea was in fact proposed and named more than two decades before by cladistic biogeographers themselves (Parenti, Ebach, 2009). On the other hand, Lieberman (2000) is correct in drawing attention to the phenomenon, which has for a long time been largely overlooked in modern biogeographic discussions and only recently began to be taken into account (e.g., Albert, Crampton, 2010;Roxo et al, 2014). This is particularly clear in the case of fish biogeography and mostly so in neotropical fishes.…”

“…Biotic dispersal has been a major factor in historical hybridization and diversity generation in Amazonian rivers. This is a consequence of the importance of neotectonic activity and resulting rearrangements in the drainage network as diversity-generating factors, both in freshwater fishes in general (Burridge et al, 2006Cardoso, Montoya-Burgos, 2009;Waters et al, 2007) and neotropical fishes in particular Lima, Ribeiro, 2011;Ribeiro et al, 2013;Roxo et al, 2014;Tagliacollo et al, 2015). Those observations and ensuing conclusions prompt a reevaluation of the assumption that vicariant and dispersalist events in their pure form are the best explanation for the diversification of the neotropical fish fauna.…”

An appraisal of the phylogenetic relationships of Hypoptopomatini cascudinhos with description of two new genera and three new species (Siluriformes: Loricariidae)

“…Both Chiachio et al (2008) and Roxo et al (2014) recovered the tribe as monophyletic, while the analysis of Cramer et al (2011) resulted in a paraphyletic Hypoptopomatini. None of the above papers, however, included a significant portion of the known diversity of the tribe, and discrepancies in the relationships found in those analyses and with the morphology-based phylogenies (Schaefer, 1991(Schaefer, , 1998Rodriguez et al, 2015; and the present analysis) are possibly due to their poor taxon sampling.…”

A new species of armored catfish Parotocinclus (Siluriformes: Loricariidae) from the rio Parnaíba basin, northeastern, Brazil

“…However, a systematic review leading to a new taxonomic classification, could reveal the coexistence of different hypoptopomatine lineages. According to Roxo et al (2014) at least two main lineages dispersed from the Amazon and Orinoco basins (composed by two undescribed species of Hisonotus and P. aff. spilurus) and from the Atlantic Coastal Drainages (formed by undescribed species of a new taxon, H. bocaiuva, and P. cf.…”