Molecular identification of redfish (genus Sebastes) in the White Sea indicates patterns of introgressive hybridisation

Abstract The rare occurrence of redfish (genus Sebastes ) in the White Sea encouraged Rolskii et al. (Polar Biol 43:385–389, 2020) to investigate the species identity of two animals captured near the Sredniy Island at 40 m depth. They reported that their morphological description proved unreliable a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Polar Biology
Main Authors: Shum, Peter, Pampoulie, Christophe
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00300-020-02718-y
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00300-020-02718-y.pdf
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00300-020-02718-y/fulltext.html
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Summary:Abstract The rare occurrence of redfish (genus Sebastes ) in the White Sea encouraged Rolskii et al. (Polar Biol 43:385–389, 2020) to investigate the species identity of two animals captured near the Sredniy Island at 40 m depth. They reported that their morphological description proved unreliable and that genetic evidence “clearly demonstrated” these redfish belong to S. norvegicus . This was inferred using the S7 and the mitochondrial control region genes. However, while their S7 matched one S. norvegicus reference sequence, the S. norvegicus mitochondrial reference sequences used to infer species identity were previously shown to cluster with S. mentella . Therefore, both of their redfish samples belong to a S. norvegicus × S. mentella (deep-pelagic) hybrid which presents an interesting perspective into the complex species dynamics in this group.