Museum samples could help to reconstruct the original distribution of Salmo trutta complex in Italy

Abstract

Partial D-loop sequences of museum specimens of brown trout and marble trout (Salmo trutta species complex) collected from Mediterranean rivers in the late 19th century were analysed to help to describe the native distribution of these species. All the individuals studied carried native haplotypes, the geographic distribution of which is consistent with published data. These results indicate that museum specimens from the 19th century could represent an opportunity to get a picture of the original genetic diversity distribution of this species complex.

The name of the trout: considerations on the taxonomic status of the Salmo trutta L., 1758 complex (Osteichthyes: Salmonidae) in Italy

“…Similar findings were recently obtained by Fabiani et al (2017) for the "macrostigma" Latium population, harbouring indeed AD and ME haplotypes. As for S. carpio, a single specimen belonged to AD lineage, thus confirming that this lacustrine trout does not represent a peculiar evolutionary line, but probably no more than an ecotype of the lake Garda (Splendiani et al 2017).…”

“…Another significant study examined the possibility to use ancient DNA (aDNA) to disentangle the phylogeography of Italian trout (Splendiani et al 2017). In this paper, a partial sequence of D-loop was obtained from a trout collection deposited at the Zoological Museum "La Specola" of the Florence University.…”

“…Some museum specimens used for an ancient DNA study(Splendiani et al 2017). (a) lake Garda carpione (collected in 1877); (b) marble trout from Po basin (collected in 1876); (c) Mediterranean trout from Ninfa (southern Latium, collected in 1897), "macrostigma" phenotype; (d) Mediterranean trout from Corsica (Tartagina forest, collected in 1892), with brownish and reddish dots phenotype.…”

Genetic identification of native populations of Mediterranean brown troutSalmo truttaL. complex (Osteichthyes: Salmonidae) in central Italy

“…For this reason our Me25, mainly characterized by SCR Mediterranean brown trout population, corresponds to 6 different haplotypes (Supplementary material, Table SI), including the one (MEcs1) that is considered basic of this lineages. This haplotype was distributed in Corsica, northern and central Italy in late nineteen century, before common stocking with Atlantic strains (Splendiani et al 2017) and was already present in prehistoric times in southern Italy (Splendiani et al 2016a). The same problem of sequence length is present for AD lineages; certainly the most common haplotype of this lineage AD-cs1, originally spread across Italian peninsula and Sardinia (Splendiani et al 2016a(Splendiani et al , 2017 is not present in our sampling area.…”

Investigating the genetic structure of trout from the Garden of Ninfa (central Italy): Suggestions for conservation and management

“…There is no current consensus about the validity of S. cetti (sensu Kottelat & Freyhof, 2007) as a species (or even as a distinct taxon within the S. trutta complex) and some authors prefer to simply include it into a more comprehensive "Mediterranean" S. trutta (e.g. Berrebi, 2015;Splendiani et al, 2017). Gratton et al (2014) analysed a diverse set of mitochondrial and nuclear markers and identified two main native genetic lineages in samples of Italian trouts: a widespread "peninsular" lineage, including samples of Salmo cenerinus, S. cettii and S. fibreni (all sensu Kottelat & Freyhof, 2007) and most of the genetic ancestry of the Garda Lake endemic Salmo carpio, and a "marble" lineage, represented by S. marmoratus populations.…”