Data for: Species identification and population genetics of the Antarctic fish genera Lepidonotothen and Nototheniops (Perciformes, Notothenioidei) ...

• Main Authors: Schiavon, Luca, Negrisolo, Enrico, Battistotti, Alessandra, Lucassen, Magnus, Damerau, Malte, Harms, Lars, Riginella, Emilio, Matschiner, Michael, Zane, Lorenzo, La Mesa, Mario, Papetti, Chiara
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2022
• Subjects: FOS Biological sciences; Antarctic Peninsula; Bouvet Island; Lepidonotothen kempi; Lepidonotothen squamifrons; Microsatellites; ND2; Scotia Arc; Southern Ocean; species limits; tRNA; Antarctic; Bouvet; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wpzgmsbqv; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.wpzgmsbqv

Accurate species identification is essential to assess biodiversity and species richness in ecosystems threatened by rapid and recent environmental changes, such as warming in most Antarctic waters. The Lepidonotothen species complex comprises demersal notothenioid fishes which inhabit the shelf areas of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Scotia Arc and sub-Antarctic islands with a circum-Antarctic distribution. Species determination in this group has often been problematic. In particular, whether Lepidonotothen squamifrons and Lepidonotothen kempi are valid as separate species has been questioned. In this study, we analysed the genetic variation among four nominal southern polar species within this complex (L. kempi, L. squamifrons, Nototheniops larseni, Nototheniops nudifrons) by means of three different markers (ND2 and tRNA mitochondrial genes and a panel of 16 nuclear microsatellites). We tested whether individuals morphologically assigned to L. kempi showed genetic separation from L. squamifrons. Our ... : Mitochondrial markers: A 1,247 bp long mitochondrial fragment containing the entire ND2 gene and the upstream (trnM) and downstream (trnW and trnA) tRNAs was amplified with the primers GLN 5'-CTACCTGAAGAGATCAAAAC-3' and ASN 5'-CGCGTTTAGCTGTTAACTAA-3' following Kocher et al. (1995). The mitochondrial sequences were trimmed, assembled and cut to isolate the portion of ND2 (1041 bp) from the tRNAs. The sequence was revised by eye when necessary, by two operators using the software MacVector ver. 12.6 (Rastogi, 2000). Molecular validation with ND2 of morphological species identification was performed by querying every sample against the GenBank database with the Blastn and Blastp algorithms (Altschul et al., 1990). To check for presence of stop codons, nucleotide sequences were translated into aminoacids with the ExPASy translate tool (Gasteiger, 2003), resulting in a length of 347 amino acids. The sequences of the trnA, trnM and trnW were manually aligned together with all orthologs available for notothenioids ...