Molecular phylogeny of the Romanian cyprinids from the Danube River

Abstract

The  family  Cyprinidae  is  one  of  the largest  families  of fish  in the  world  and  a  well­known component  of the East  Asian freshwater fish fauna.  The  majority  of  research  on  animals  has  used single  mitochondrial  DNA  genes  to  assess  population  or  low­level  taxonomic  relationships. Phylogenetic relationships between Romanian cyprinids (Teleostei: Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae) from the Danube river were investigated comparing cox2 mitochondrial gene sequences from ten species (Barbus  barbus,  Arischthys  nobilis  Hypophthalmichthys  molitrix,  Scardinius  erytrophtalmus,  Tinca tinca,  Rutilus  rutilus,  Cyprinus  carpio,  Abramis  brama,  Carassius  auratus  gibelio,  Carassius carassius).  Scardinius  erytrophtalmus  was  newly  sequenced.  Phylogenetic  analysis  indicated  that there  are  two  principal  lineages  in  Cyprinidae:  cyprinine  and  leuciscine.  The  cyprinine  group includes the Cyprinus, Carassius, Barbus and Tinca genera. The taxonomic position of genus Tinca is  controversial,  because  the  neighbor­joining  and  maximum  parsimony  analysis  place  it  in  the cyprinine group alongside with the Carassius genus and in the maximum likelihood tree it appears as a paraphyletic group with the leuciscine lineage. The leuciscine group is divided into two clades. One includes  the  genera  Abramis,  Scardinius  and  Rutilus  and  the  other  includes  the  Arischthys  and Hypophthalmichthys  species  which  originated  from  East  Asia.  Cobitis  danubialis  was  used  as  an outgroup species.