Explosive speciation of Takifugu: another use of fugu as a model system for evolutionary biology.
Although the fugu Takifugu rubripes has attracted attention as a model organism for genomic studies because of its compact genome, it is not generally appreciated that there are approximately 25 closely related species with limited distributions in the waters of East Asia. We performed molecular phylogenetic analyses and constructed a time tree using whole mitochondrial genome sequences from 15 Takifugu species together with 10 outgroups to examine patterns of diversification. The resultant time tree showed that the modern Takifugu species underwent explosive speciation during the Pliocene 1.8-5.3 Ma, which is comparable with that of the Malawi cichlids and tropheine cichlids in Lake Tanganyika. Considering their limited distributions and remarkable variations in coloration, morphology, and behavior, the results of the present study strongly suggest that Takifugu species are strong candidates as a model system for evolutionary studies of speciation mechanisms in marine environments where few such organisms are available.
Yamanoue
Yusuke
Y
Department of Aquatic Bioscience, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. ayyamano@mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Miya
Masaki
M
Matsuura
Keiichi
K
Miyazawa
Seita
S
Tsukamoto
Naofumi
N
Doi
Hiroyuki
H
Takahashi
Hiroshi
H
Mabuchi
Kohji
K
Nishida
Mutsumi
M
Sakai
Harumi
H
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D023681:Cichlids; D049810:Genetic Speciation; D010802:Phylogeny; D023741:Takifugu / Q000235:genetics*