Molecular species delimitation refines the taxonomy of native and nonnative physinine snails in North America

Being able to associate an organism with a scientific name is fundamental to our understanding of its conservation status, ecology, and evolutionary history. Gastropods in the subfamily Physinae have been especially troublesome to identify because morphological variation can be unrelated to interspe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2021-11, Vol.11 (1), p.21739-21739, Article 21739
Main Authors: Young, Michael K., Smith, Rebecca, Pilgrim, Kristine L., Schwartz, Michael K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/158/2178
631/158/670
631/181/2480
631/181/757
Animals
Candidate species
Conservation status
Geographical distribution
Humanities and Social Sciences
Hypotheses
Introduced Species
multidisciplinary
North America
Phylogeny
Phylogeography
Physinae
River basins
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Snails - classification
Snails - genetics
Species diversity
Taxa
Taxonomy
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Summary:Being able to associate an organism with a scientific name is fundamental to our understanding of its conservation status, ecology, and evolutionary history. Gastropods in the subfamily Physinae have been especially troublesome to identify because morphological variation can be unrelated to interspecific differences and there have been widespread introductions of an unknown number of species, which has led to a speculative taxonomy. To resolve uncertainty about species diversity in North America, we targeted an array of single-locus species delimitation methods at publically available specimens and new specimens collected from the Snake River basin, USA to generate species hypotheses, corroborated using nuclear analyses of the newly collected specimens. A total-evidence approach delineated 18 candidate species, revealing cryptic diversity within recognized taxa and a lack of support for other named taxa. Hypotheses regarding certain local endemics were confirmed, as were widespread introductions, including of an undescribed taxon likely belonging to a separate genus in southeastern Idaho for which the closest relatives are in southeast Asia. Overall, single-locus species delimitation was an effective first step toward understanding the diversity and distribution of species in Physinae and to guiding future investigation sampling and analyses of species hypotheses.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-01197-3