Profound and rapid allopatric differentiation of Arctic charr Salvelinus alpinus on a microgeographic scale

It is considered that allopatric speciation proceeds slower than sympatric speciation and rarely results in rapid differentiation of populations. In particular, high intraspecific divergence in fishes from recently glaciated freshwater systems is typically observed within flocks of sympatric forms,...

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Published in:Hydrobiologia 2023-03, Vol.850 (5), p.1021-1043
Main Authors: Alekseyev, Sergey S., Gordeeva, Natalia V., Samusenok, Vitalii P., Yur’ev, Anatolii L., Korostelev, Nikolai B., Taranyuk, Stepan I., Matveev, Arkadii N.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Allopatry
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Differentiation
Divergence
Ecology
Fishes
Freshwater
Freshwater & Marine Ecology
Freshwater fish
Genetic drift
Gills
Haplotypes
Inland water environment
Life Sciences
Meristic counts
Microsatellites
Mitochondrial DNA
Morphology
Morphometry
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
Populations
Primary Research Paper
Salvelinus alpinus
Specialization
Speciation
Sympatric populations
Zoology
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Summary:It is considered that allopatric speciation proceeds slower than sympatric speciation and rarely results in rapid differentiation of populations. In particular, high intraspecific divergence in fishes from recently glaciated freshwater systems is typically observed within flocks of sympatric forms, not between geographically isolated populations. We present an alternative case of fast and profound eco-morphological and genetic divergence between two allopatric Transbaikalian populations of Arctic charr. In one, charr are predominantly piscivorous with sparse short gill rakers; in the other, predominantly planktivorous with dense long gill rakers. Gill raker number differs with no overlap and there is considerable differentiation in other meristic and morphometric characters. Both populations manifest exceptionally low variability at microsatellite loci coupled with substantial interpopulational differences in allele composition obviously resulting from genetic drift. Still, they form a monophyletic clade in microsatellite phylogenetic tree of Transbaikalian charr and share the same mtDNA control region haplotype, which evidences their common origin. According to genetic dating, the divergence of the populations occurred about 14 thousand years ago. Our study shows that high differentiation between local charr populations can emerge in allopatry over a short time if speciation is driven by trophic specialization and is facilitated by small population sizes.
ISSN:0018-8158
1573-5117
DOI:10.1007/s10750-022-05064-8