《Are Acila divaricata and Acila mirabilis One Species or Two Distinct Species Evidence from COI Mitochondrial DNA》.pdfVIP

J. Ocean Univ. China (Oceanic and Coastal Sea Research) DOI 10.1007/s11802-014-2139-y ISSN 1672-5182, 2014 13 (2): 283-289 /xbywb/ E-mail:xbywb@ Are Acila divaricata and Acila mirabilis One Species or Two Distinct Species? Evidence from COI Mitochondrial DNA * ZHANG Junlong, SHI Huafeng, XU Fengshan, and SHA Zhongli Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, P. R. China (Received August 22, 2012; revised October 15, 2012; accepted July 17, 2013) © Ocean University of China, Science Press and Spring-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract Acila divaricata (Hinds, 1843) and A. mirabilis (Adams and Reeve, 1850) are common benthic bivalves in China. A number of researchers have proposed that the latter species is a junior synonym of the former species. Because of morphological similarities, it is difficult to distinguish these two species based on visual examination only. For better understanding of their taxon- omy, the mitochondrial COI gene fragments of five individuals of A. divaricata from the East China Sea and six individuals of A. mirabilis from the Yellow Sea were sequenced in this study. The phylogenetic relationships of the obtained COI sequences, together with nineteen sequences of three species of the genus Nucula, were analyzed. The pairwise intra- and inter-specific distances for the COI sequences ranged from 0.002 to 0.017 and from 0.128 to 0.134, respectively, and no overlap was found. Phylogenetically, A. divaricata and A. mirabilis form distinct clades and cluster into a sister to all other Nucula species. The results indicated that A. di- varicata and A. mirabilis are two distinct species. The differences in the morphology and distribution between the two species were briefly discussed. Key words cytochrome oxidase I; molecular taxonomy; Bivalvia; Acila ; distribution