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© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Carnivorous piranhas are distributed in four serrasalmid genera including Pygocentrus, which inhabit major river basins of South America. While P. cariba and P. piraya are endemics of the Orinoco and São Francisco basins, respectively, P. nattereri is widely distributed across the Amazonas, Essequibo, lower Paraná, Paraguay, and coastal rivers of northeastern Brazil, with recent records of introductions in Asia. Few studies have focused on the genetic diversity and systematics of Pygocentrus and the putative presence of additional species within P. nattereri has never been the subject of a detailed molecular study. Here we aimed to delimit species of Pygocentrus, test the phylogeographic structure of P. nattereri, and access the origin of introduced specimens of P. nattereri in Asia. Phylogenetic analyses based on a mitochondrial dataset involving maximum-likelihood tree reconstruction, genetic distances, Bayesian analysis, three delimitation approaches, and haplotype analysis corroborate the morphological hypothesis of the occurrence of three species of Pygocentrus. However, we provide here strong evidence that P. nattereri contains at least five phylogeographically-structured lineages in the Amazonas, Guaporé (type locality), Itapecuru, Paraná/Paraguay, and Tocantins/Araguaia river basins. We finally found that the introduced specimens in Asia consistently descend from the lineage of P. nattereri from the main Rio Amazonas. These results contribute to future research aimed to detect morphological variation that may occur in those genetic lineages of Pygocentrus.

Details

Title
Molecular Data Reveal Multiple Lineages in Piranhas of the Genus Pygocentrus (Teleostei, Characiformes)
Author
Melo, Bruno F  VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Foresti, Fausto; Oliveira, Claudio  VIAFID ORCID Logo 
First page
371
Publication year
2019
Publication date
2019
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20734425
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2548449783
Copyright
© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.