Morphology and molecular evidence support the validity of Pogonias courbina (Lacepède, 1803) (Teleostei: Sciaenidae), with a redescription and neotype designation

Abstract

The family Sciaenidae comprises about 300 species. The black drum Pogonias cromis was the only valid species of the genus. Herein, Pogonias courbina Lacepède 1803 is redescribed based on morphological and molecular evidence and a neotype is designated. Pogonias courbina is distinguished by the following characters: the occurrence of characteristic thickening of the dorsal spines VII to XI in all specimens larger than 250 mm SL; all pterygiophores in the dorsal-fin laminar, thin; anal-fin pterygiophores slender excluded those of spines; lateral projections of gas bladder with few finger-like projections; genetic distance between both species 1%; exclusive occurrence of characters in six informative sites of COI (58 G; 214 G; 328 A; 331 A; 553C; 580 G). The method Automatic Barcode gap Discovery detected gaps in nucleotid distance congruent with the NJ, MP, and ML tree analysis. Also, advertisement calls are three times shorter in duration in P . courbina than in P . cromis . In addition, two monophyletic groups for P . cromis and P . courbina appear in trees obtained with different methodologies, emphasizing the absence of shared haplotypes. A gap of about 8000 km occurs in the distribution of both species along coastal areas of the Atlantic Ocean.

Make every species count: fastachar software for rapid determination of molecular diagnostic characters to describe species

“…Furthermore, Kühn and Haase (2019) note that the software considers masked entries in the DNA as valid characters, yielding potentially incorrect results. spider (Brown et al, 2012) is an open‐source software package implemented in r and provides a number of functions for use in analyses of DNA barcoding studies, including determining MDCs (Azpelicueta et al, 2019; Escobar et al, 2019). spider , however, does not adhere to the definition of MDCs as proposed by Jörger and Schrödl (2013) and does not treat masked entries in the DNA correctly, as pointed out by Kühn and Haase (2019).…”

“…The 18S rRNA and 28S rRNA sets, from the work by Jörger and Schrödl (2013), were used to compare the performance of fastachar with that of caos (Sarkar et al, 2008). Similarly, we used the COI data set from Azpelicueta et al (2019) to compare the performance of fastachar with that of spider (Brown et al, 2012). The MDCs determined by fastachar were identical to those determined by caos and spider .…”

“…However, there is no denying of the utility of DNA barcodes in species discovery by first flagging putative new species such as cryptic species, morphologically identical but genetically distinct, in many nominal taxa. Examples can be found in disparate groups of organisms such as Rotifera (Fontaneto et al, 2011), Mollusca (Borges et al ., 2012; Jörger et al, 2012; Neusser et al, 2011), Arthropoda (Hebert et al, 2004), fish (Azpelicueta et al, 2019) and turtles (Reid et al, 2011).…”

The Magellanic Province and its fish fauna (South America): Several provinces or one?

“…Even though the results of Pinheiro et al (2018) are well supported, they refer almost exclusively to reef fishes. Several new species endemic to the Argentine Province have been recently described or resuscitated, all of them of warm-water affinities, such as the chondrichthyans Squatina argentina, S. occulta (Vooren & Silva, 1991), Dasyatis hypostigma (Santos & Carvalho, 2004) and Myliobatis ridens (Ruocco, Lucifora, Díaz de Astarloa, Mabragaña, & Delpiani, 2012), and the sciaenids Macrodon atricauda (Carvalho-Filho, Santos, & Sampaio, 2010) and Pogonias courbina (Azpelicueta et al, 2019). In addition, as taxonomic work proceeds, the putative low endemism of the Argentine Province is starting to be refuted.…”

Phylogeography, Population Structure, and Historical Demography of Black Drum in North America

“…Black Drum that occur along the Atlantic coast of South America are now considered a distinct species, P. courbina (Azpelicueta et al. 2019). Black Drum occur as far north as the Bay of Fundy but are most common from Chesapeake Bay southward, with the species achieving its greatest abundance on the Louisiana and Texas coasts (Leard et al.…”