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. 2019 Jul 13;4(2):2499-2503.
doi: 10.1080/23802359.2019.1638839.

DNA barcoding cannot discriminate between Sardinella tawilis and S. hualiensis (Clupeiformes: Clupeidae)

Alison Faye O Chan  1   2 , Adrian U Luczon  2 , Ian Kendrich C Fontanilla  2 , Perry S Ong  2 , Mudjekeewis D Santos  3 , Demian A Willette  4 , Jonas P Quilang  1
Affiliations

DNA barcoding cannot discriminate between Sardinella tawilis and S. hualiensis (Clupeiformes: Clupeidae)

Alison Faye O Chan et al. Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. .

Abstract

Sardinella tawilis, the only known freshwater sardinella in the world, is endemic to Taal Lake, Philippines. Previous studies found the Taiwan sardinella, S. hualiensis, to be morphologically very similar to S. tawilis and identified it as the marine sister species of S. tawilis. In this study, DNA barcoding using the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene was carried out to analyze species demarcation in the Sardinella genus, focusing primarily on the relationship between S. tawilis and S. hualiensis. The neighbour-joining (NJ) tree that was constructed using Kimura 2-parameter (K2P) model showed a single clade for the two species with 100% bootstrap support. K2P interspecific genetic divergence ranged from 0% to 0.522%, which is clearly below the suggested 3-3.5% cutoff for species discrimination. Recombination activating gene 1 (RAG1), mitochondrial control region (CR), cytochrome b, 16S rRNA, and S7 markers were used to further validate the results. Sardinella tawilis and S. hualiensis clustered together with a bootstrap support of 99-100% in each of the NJ trees. Low interspecific genetic distances between S. tawilis and S. hualiensis for all the markers except CR could be attributed to incipient allopatric speciation.

Keywords: COI; DNA barcoding; RAG1; Sardinella hualiensis; Sardinella tawilis.

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Conflict of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Unrooted neighbour-joining tree using Kimura 2-Parameter (K2P) genetic distances of 52 COI sequences from 13 Sardinella species. Bootstrap values based on 1000 replicates are shown at nodes. The S. tawilis and S. hualiensis sequences were generated from this study. All other sequences were downloaded from GenBank with their designated accession numbers. Scale bar represents two nucleotide changes per 100 nucleotides. PHL: Philippines; TWN: Taiwan.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Unrooted neighbour-joining tree using Kimura 2-Parameter (K2P) genetic distances of 26 RAG1 sequences from six Sardinella species and outgroup Harengula jaguana. Bootstrap values based on 1000 replicates are shown at nodes. The S. tawilis and S. hualiensis sequences were generated from this study while the outgroup was downloaded from GenBank with designated accession numbers. Scale bar represents one nucleotide change per 100 nucleotides. PHL: Philippines; TWN: Taiwan.
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