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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
agricultural and biological sciences
Remarkable morphological stasis in an extant vertebrate despite tens of millions of years of divergence
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Volume 278, No. 1708, Year 2011
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Description
The relationship between genotypic and phenotypic divergence over evolutionary time varies widely, and cases of rapid phenotypic differentiation despite genetic similarity have attracted much attention. Here, we report an extreme case of the reverse pattern-morphological stasis in a tropical fish despite massive genetic divergence. We studied the enigmatic African freshwater butterfly fish (Pantodon buchholzi), whose distinctive morphology earns it recognition as a monotypic family. We sequenced the mitochondrial genome of Pantodon from the Congo basin and nine other osteoglossomorph taxa for comparison with previous mitogenomic profiles of Pantodon from the Niger basin and other related taxa. Pantodon populations form a monophyletic group, yet their mitochondrial coding sequences differ by 15.2 per cent between the Niger and Congo basins. The mitogenomic divergence time between these populations is estimated to be greater than 50 Myr, and deep genetic divergence was confirmed by nuclear sequence data. Among six sister-group comparisons of osteoglossomorphs, Pantodon exhibits the slowest rate of morphological divergence despite a level of genetic differentiation comparable to both species-rich (e.g. Mormyridae) and species-poor (e.g. Osteoglossidae) families. Morphological stasis in these two allopatric lineages of Pantodon offers a living vertebrate model for investigating phenotypic stability over millions of generations in the face of profound fluctuations in environmental conditions. © 2010 The Royal Society.
Authors & Co-Authors
Lavoué, Sébastien
United Kingdom, London
The Natural History Museum, London
Japan, Tokyo
The University of Tokyo
Miya, Masaki U.
Japan, Chuo-ku
Natural History Museum and Institute, Chiba
Arnegard, Matthew E.
United States, Seattle
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
McIntyre, Peter B.
United States, Madison
University of Wisconsin-madison
Mamonékéné, Victor
Congo, Brazzaville
Universite Marien Ngouabi
Nishida, Mutsumi
Japan, Tokyo
The University of Tokyo
Statistics
Citations: 56
Authors: 6
Affiliations: 6
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1098/rspb.2010.1639
ISSN:
09628452
e-ISSN:
14712954
Research Areas
Cancer
Genetics And Genomics
Study Locations
Congo
Niger