Integrating phylogeographic and ecological niche approaches to delimitating cryptic lineages in the blue-green damselfish (Chromis viridis)

Shang Yin Vanson Liu; Mao-Ning Tuanmu; Rita Rachmawati; Gusti Ngurah Mahardika; Paul H Barber

doi:10.7717/peerj.7384

Integrating phylogeographic and ecological niche approaches to delimitating cryptic lineages in the blue-green damselfish (Chromis viridis)

PeerJ. 2019 Jul 30:7:e7384. doi: 10.7717/peerj.7384. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Shang Yin Vanson Liu¹, Mao-Ning Tuanmu², Rita Rachmawati^{3

4}, Gusti Ngurah Mahardika⁵, Paul H Barber⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Marine Biotechnology and Resources, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
² Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
³ Center for Fisheries Research, Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Jakarta, Indonesia.
⁴ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁵ The Indonesian Biodiversity Research Centre, Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia.

Abstract

Species delimitation is challenging in sibling species/cryptic lineages because of the absence of clear diagnostic traits. However, integration of different approaches such as phylogeography and ecological niche comparison offers one potential approach to tease apart recently diverged lineages. In this study, we estimate the ecological niche divergence among lineages in Chromis viridis in a broad-scale phylogeographic framework to test whether the combination of these two approaches can effectively distinguish recently diverged lineages. Results from Cytb and Rag2 analyses identified two cryptic lineages (C. viridis A and C. viridis B) that diverged ∼3 Myr ago. Estimates of ecological niche divergence with 11 environmental parameters across the broad geographic range of these lineages showed overlapping ecological niches and niche conservatism. However, regardless of the incongruence between genetic and ecological niche divergence, the substantial genetic divergence between the two clades of C. viridis in both mtDNA and nuclear loci strong suggest that they are cryptic taxa.

Keywords: Hybridization; Incomplete lineage sorting; Nuclear gene; Speciation; mtDNA.

Grants and funding

This study was funded by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (Grant Number: MOST 106-2611-M-110-009). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.