Comparative phylogeography reveals consistently shallow genetic diversity in a mitochondrial marker in Antarctic bdelloid rotifers ...

• Main Authors: Fontaneto, Diego, Vildan Cakil, Zeyneb, Garlasché, Giuseppe, Iakovenko, Nataliia, Di Cesare, Andrea, Eckert, Ester M., Guidetti, Roberto, Hamdan, Lina, Janko, Karel, Lukashanets, Dzmitry, Rebecchi, Lorena, Schiaparelli, Stefano, Sforzi, Tommaso, Kašparová, Eva Štefková, Velasco-Castrillón, Alejandro, Walsh, Elizabeth
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2021
• Subjects: endemism; meiofauna; rotifera; polar regions; FOS Biological sciences; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Folmer; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sj3tx964b; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.sj3tx964b

Aim: The long history of isolation of the Antarctic continent, coupled with the harsh ecological conditions of freezing temperatures could affect the patterns of genetic diversity in the organisms living there. We aim (1) to test whether such pattern can be seen in a mitochondrial marker of bdelloid rotifers, a group of microscopic aquatic and limno-terrestrial animals, and (2) to speculate on the potential mechanisms driving the pattern. Location: focus on Antarctica. Taxon: Rotifera Bdelloidea. Methods: We analysed different metrics of genetic diversity, also spatially explicit ones, including number of haplotypes, accumulation curves, genetic distances, time to the most recent common ancestor, number of independently evolving units from DNA taxonomy, strength of the correlation between geographic and genetic distances, population genetics neutrality and differentiation indices, potential historical processes, obtained from an extensive sample of cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) sequences obtained from ... : In total, 228 new sequences of 661 base pairs of the mitochondrial marker cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) from Antarctic bdelloid rotifers were generated from single animals collected in the field. Animals were collected across the continent, mostly from Scott and Enderby areas and the Antarctic Peninsula. DNA was extracted using Chelex or HotShot protocol and the COI Folmer fragment was amplified using the HCO2198 and LCO1490 primers. 263 other previously published sequences from the same species were gathered from the literature. 1587 sequences from species of bdelloid rotifers living outside Antarctica were gathered from published literature. We kept all the species with at least 15 sequences longer than 500 base pairs and that passed quality filtering controls, such as not having stop codons within the reading frame. In addition, 164 sequences were obtained from Philodina megalotrocha in North America. For each Antarctic COI sequence, we obtained the WGS84 geographic coordinates of the population of ...