Genetic population structure in a commercial marin

Authors: Justin J So Sven Uthicke JeanFrançois Hamel Annie Mercier

Publish Date: 2011/01/13

Volume: 158, Issue: 4, Pages: 859-870

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Abstract

The patterns of genetic diversity and connectivity were investigated in Cucumaria frondosa the most abundant sea cucumber in the North Atlantic to assist in the management and conservation of this ecologically important marine invertebrate which is the target of an emerging fishery Mitochondrial DNA COI sequences of 334 C frondosa were obtained and analyzed mainly from its western North Atlantic range where the commercial fishery is being developed with complementary sampling in the mid and eastern North Atlantic Analysis of molecular variance showed no significant P  005 differences among subpopulations in the western region suggesting that it constitutes one panmictic population The same analysis showed low but significant differences between eastern and western Atlantic populations Coalescent analyses using isolation with migration models and a Bayesian skyline plot indicated historical divergence and a general increase in population size prior to the last glacial maximum and highly asymmetric gene flow nearly 100 times lower from west to east between sea cucumbers from North America and Norway Results suggest that subpopulations of C frondosa within the western North Atlantic have been highly connected We propose that aided by the highconnectivity local subpopulations can recover rapidly from natural ie ice ages or anthropogenic ie overfishing population declines through recruitment from deep refugiaWe are indebted to L Barrett Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture who organized the collection and transport of the majority of samples used in this study and extremely grateful to the following people for their assistance in obtaining samples in Canada G Parsons P Mackey T Russell R Russell W Russell B Hedderson B Dennis J LeBlanc DB Stewart H Fowler B O’Donnell P Sargent R Singh C Davis T Siferd M Curtis W Minor D Loveless E Hynick B Lambert J Drew D Kearley H Richardson E Richardson S Rowe J Angnatok R Foulem M Guay V Wareham Z Sun B Oram E Russell D Stansbury in USA S Feindel J Berke in Iceland K Olafsson in Norway C Schander H Ringvold T Jørgensen and in Russia E Gudimova and P Zolotarev Thanks to G Doyle Z Sun C Negrijn and N Laite for their laboratory assistance and to M Rise and J Doré for use of their laboratory and equipment Research was funded by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Fisheries and Oceans Canada the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation and grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to A Mercier

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