Investigation of mechanisms underlying chaotic genetic patchiness in the intertidal marbled crab Pachygrapsus marmoratus
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Investigation of mechanisms underlying chaotic genetic patchiness in the intertidal marbled crab Pachygrapsus marmoratus (Brachyura: Grapsidae) across the Ligurian Sea A. Iannucci1, S. Cannicci1,2* , I. Caliani3, M. Baratti4, C. Pretti5,6 and S. Fratini1
Abstract Background: Studies on marine community dynamics and population structures are limited by the lack of exhaustive knowledge on the larval dispersal component of connectivity. Genetic data represents a powerful tool in understanding such processes in the marine realm. When dealing with dispersion and connectivity in marine ecosystems, many evidences show patterns of genetic structure that cannot be explained by any clear geographic trend and may show temporal instability. This scenario is usually referred to as chaotic genetic patchiness, whose driving mechanisms are recognized to be selection, temporal shifts in local population dynamics, sweepstakes reproductive success and collective dispersal. In this study we focused on the marbled crab Pachygrapsus marmoratus that inhabits the rocky shores of the Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and East Atlantic Ocean, and disperses through planktonic larvae for about 1 month. P. marmoratus exhibits unexpectedly low connectivity levels at local scale, although well-defined phylogeographic patterns across the species’ distribution range were described. This has been explained as an effect of subtle geographic barriers or due to sweepstake reproductive success. In order to verify a chaotic genetic patchiness scenario, and to explore mechanisms underlying it, we planned our investigation within the Ligurian Sea, an isolated basin of the western Mediterranean Sea, and we genotyped 321 individuals at 11 microsatellite loci. Results: We recorded genetic heterogeneity among our Ligurian Sea samples with the occurrence of genetic clusters not matching the original populations and a slight inter-population divergence, with the geographically most distant populations being the genetically most similar ones. Moreover, individuals from each site were assigned to all the genetic clusters. We also recorded evidences of self-recruitment and a higher than expected within-site kinship. (Continued on next page)
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Biology, University of Florence, via Madonna del Piano 6, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy 2 The Swire Institute of Marine Science and the Division of Ecology and Biodiversity, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are incl
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