Haplotype distribution and connectivity of the white sea urchin Tripneustes ventricosus across the Brazilian biogeographic province
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Abstract
Sea urchins play important roles in marine ecosystems as key herbivores and some species have wide geographic range. The Atlantic white sea urchin Tripneustes ventricosus is abundant in many rock reefs of the eastern and western Atlantic, and may be found in high densities in Atolls and Archipelagos. Despite the importance of sea urchins in insular ecosystems, there is no study evaluating the genetic structure and the origin of the white sea urchin in isolated ecosystems. Such information is crucial to understand the connectivity and genetic diversity of these populations from the tropical Atlantic provinces. To evaluate the origin of the white sea urchin in Fernando de Noronha Archipelago and the genetic features of this population, we conducted studies on the population structure of the white sea urchin using mitochondrial DNA (COI), in two regions within the Brazilian biogeographic province and compared with other regions in the Atlantic. The white sea urchin from Fernando de Noronha was found to be genetically distinct, with FST ranging from 0.3 to 0.9 from other populations in Atlantic. The sharing of haplotypes between the Brazilian coast and the archipelago suggests that insular species derived from the Brazilian coast, rather than the East Atlantic. Moreover, all other Atlantic populations were genetically isolated, with low genetic diversity being a common characteristic among them (ranging from 0.0011 to 0.0022). The low connectivity found within populations might be related to the presence of soft barriers among the Brazilian biogeographic province. The low nucleotide diversity may also suggest that T. ventricosus may have undergone bottleneck processes at some stage of their evolution. This study has important implications on the geographic distribution, population structure and gene flow of the white sea urchin among the Atlantic regions. Further studies should evaluate the biological and ecological aspects of the species in both insular and continental marine ecosystems.
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2016. Haplotype distribution and connectivity of the white sea urchin Tripneustes ventricosus across the Brazilian biogeographic province. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2529v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2529v1Author comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
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Competing Interests
Wander Godinho is an employee of Enviromentor.
Author Contributions
Wander O Godinho conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Rodrigo Maggioni conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Ana L Lacerda performed the experiments, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Tito M C Lotufo conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Field Study Permissions
The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade - ICMBio
Sistema de Autorização e Informação em Biodiversidade - SISBIO
Permit Number: 1840-1
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The research has combined new data with data previously published. At the moment I have not uploaded the new data into GenBank, however, I have the list of all sequences in a nexus file, in case the reviewers want to analyse it.
Funding
Financial support was provided by the Coordination for Improvement of Higher Level or Education Personnel (CAPES) to Godinho W.A through the completion of this project and his Master degree. Logistic support was provided by TAMAR Institute, in Bahia and ICMBio during fieldwork in the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.