Mitochondrial DNA diversity of Coilia mystus (Clupeiformes: Engraulidae) in three Chinese estuaries

We used sequences of mitochondrial cytb and 16SrRNA gene segments in order to clarify the genetic diversity and population structure in three Chinese estuary populations of Coilia mystus: 21 individuals from ChangJiang River (Yangtze River) estuary, 22 from MinJiang River estuary, and 22 from ZhuJiang River (Pearl River) estuary (65 individuals total). We obtained 607 base pairs of consensus cytb sequence. Thirty four distinct haplotypes were detected among the 65 cytb sequences. The indexes of nucleotide diversity (pi) in these three populations were ChangJiang 0.533%, MinJiang 1.135%, and ZhuJiang 0.268%. MinJiang is the largest of the three populations. Genetic distances within the populations were between 0.3 and 1.2%, and 0.8 to 10.8% among populations. The largest genetic distance was 10.8% between the ChangJiang and ZhuJiang populations, and the smallest was 0.8% between MinJiang and ZhuJiang populations. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) analysis revealed that variation among populations accounts for 90.25% of total variation, suggesting that this is the main source of total variance. We obtained 470 base pairs of consensus sequence of 16SrRNA. We detected 19 distinct haplotypes among the 65 sequences. The indexes of nucleotide diversity (pi) in these three populations were ChangJiang 0.108%, MinJiang 0.843%, and ZhuJiang 0.097%. MinJiang is also the largest among these three populations. Genetic distances were between 0.1 and 0.9% within populations and 0.5 to 1.9% between populations. The largest genetic distance was the 1.9% between the ChangJiang and MinJiang populations, and the smallest was 0.5% between the MinJiang and the ZhuJiang populations. AMOVA analysis disclosed that variation among populations accounts for 74.61% of total variation, suggesting that this is the main source of total variation. The results of this study suggest that the three Coilia mystus populations, especially the most isolated Changjiang population, have developed significant genetic structure.