Utility of amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) to analyse genetic structures within the Alexandrium tamarense species complex

Phylogenetic analyses of the Alexandrium tamarense species complex using ribosomal RNA sequences show a differentiation of ribotypes/clades into geographic areas and not into the three morphotypes/species A. tamarense, A. fundyense and A. catenella. Different parts of the rRNA operon have proven informative in revealing the existence and the relationships of these geographic clades, whereas even internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions lack the resolution required to gain a deeper insight into the population structure of the species complex. Here, the utility of the DNA fingerprinting technique Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) as a possible tool for such purposes was tested. A mixed sampling strategy was used in order to assess the amount of variation of AFLP banding patterns at the level of populations and geographic clades. We also describe optimized methods to achieve a good reproducibility. Our results suggest that AFLPs can provide useful information at the population level using clonal samples from a certain bloom, whereas the amount of variation that we found is too high to allow for meaningful comparisons of a few strains collected from different localities at different time points even though they belong to one geographic clade.