Journal Article

DNA barcoding of Malaysian commercial snapper reveals an unrecognized species of the yellow-lined Lutjanus (Pisces:Lutjanidae)

Adamson, Eleanor A. S., Nor Mohd, Siti Azizah, Man, Alias, Juliana, Lia Halim, Wei-Jen, Chen, Md, Darlina Naim, Bakar, Adibah Abu

2018

Overview

Management of wild fisheries resources requires accurate knowledge on which species are being routinely exploited, but it can be hard to identify fishes to species level, especially in speciose fish groups where colour patterns vary with age. Snappers of the genus Lutjanus represent one such group, where fishes can be hard to identify and as a result fisheries statistics fail to capture species-level taxonomic information. This study employs traditional morphological and DNA barcoding approaches to identify adult and juvenile Lutjanus species harvested in Malaysian waters. Our results reveal a suite of species that differs markedly from those that have previously been considered important in the Malaysian wild-capture fishery and show that official fisheries statistics do not relate to exploitation at the species level. Furthermore, DNA barcoding uncovered two divergent groups of bigeye snapper ('Lutjanus lutjanus') distributed on either side of the Malay Peninsula, displaying a biogeographical pattern similar to distributions observed for many co-occurring reef-distributed fish groups. One of these bigeye snapper groups almost certainly represents an unrecognized species in need of taxonomic description. The study demonstrates the utility of DNA barcoding in uncovering overlooked diversity and for assessing species catch composition in a complicated but economically important taxonomic group.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Animal Distribution / Animals / Biodiversity / Biology and Life Sciences / Commercial fishing / Computer and information sciences / Coral Reefs / Deoxyribonucleic acid / DNA / DNA barcoding / DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic / Earth Sciences / Ecology / Ecology and Environmental Sciences / Economic importance / Environmental aspects / Evolution / Exploitation / Fish / Fisheries / Fisheries resources / Fishery resources / Fishes / Fishing / Gene sequencing / Identification / Industry / Lutjanus / Lutjanus lutjanus / Malaysia / Morphology / Oceans and Seas / People and Places / Perciformes - classification / Perciformes - genetics / Perciformes - growth & development / Phylogeography / Planning / Population / Research and analysis methods / Resource management / Seafood / Snappers / Species / Species diversity / Species Specificity / Statistics / Wildlife conservation