Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Type: Articles
Published: 2012-03-14
Page range: 52–66
Abstract views: 40

Classification of Crangonyx islandicus (Amphipoda, Crangonyctidae) based on morphological characters and comparison with molecular phylogenies

Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland
Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland
Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland
Crustacea groundwater morphology RNA convergence biogeography colonization Iceland

Abstract

Crangonyx islandicus is a groundwater amphipod species endemic to Iceland and a member of the family Crangonyctidaewhich is widespread throughout the Holarctic region. A previous study based on variation in nuclear genes showed thatC. islandicus closest relatives are Crangonyx species from North America, where most of the species diversity of the genusoccurs. In this study, we aim at describing the morphological affinities of C. islandicus with North American Crangonyxspecies and two Eurasian species, C. chlebnikovi and C. subterraneus. We used the morphological characters defined byZhang & Holsinger (2003) and scored them for different populations of C. islandicus as well as for C. chlebnikovi and C.subterraneus. The molecular phylogeny of the Crangonyctidae family and the morphological character states are com-pared in order to detect potential convergence in the morphological traits, common in subterranean species. C. islandicusappears to be close morphologically to C. subterraneus from Europe and C. longicarpus from North America. The morphological proximity of C. islandicus and C. subterraneus is incongruent with the pattern observed from molecular data.

References

  1. Arbačiauskas, K. (2008) Synurella ambulans (F. Müller, 1846), a new native amphipod species of Lithuanian waters. Acta Zoologica Lituanica, 18, 66–68.

    Culver, D.C., Holsinger, J.R., Christman, M.C. & Pipan, T. (2010) Morphological differences among eyeless amphipods in the genus Stygobromus dwelling in different subterranean habitats. Journal of Crustacean Biology, 30, 68–74.

    Dray, S. & Dufour, A.B. (2007) The ade4 package: implementing the duality diagram for ecologists. Journal of Statistical Software, 22, 1–20.

    Felsenstein, J. (2005) PHYLIP (Phylogeny Inference Package) version 3.6. Distributed by the author. Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle.

    Flot, J.F., Wörheide, G. & Dattagupta S. (2010) Unsuspected diversity of Niphargus amphipods in the chemoautotrophic cave ecosystem of Frasassi, central Italy. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 10, 171–184.

    Holsinger, J.R. (1967) Systematics, speciation, and distribution of the subterranean amphipod genus Stygonectes (Gammaridae). U.S. National Museum Bulletin 259, 176 pp.

    Holsinger, J.R. (1976) The freshwater amphipod crustaceans (Gammaridae) of North America. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, 89 pp.

    Holsinger, J.R. (1978) Systematics of the subterranean amphipod genus Stygobromus (Crangonyctidae), part II: species of the eastern United States. Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology 266, 144 pp.

    Holsinger, J.R. (1987) Redescription of the stygobiont amphipod crustacean Stygobromus pusillus (Crangonyctidae) from the Soviet Union, with comments on taxonomic and zoogeographic relationships. Journal of Crustacean Biology, 7, 249–257.

    Holsinger, J.R. & Skalski, A.W. (1980) The taxonomy and systematic status of Crangonyx paxi Schellenberg (Crangonyctidae). Crustaceana, Suppl. 6, 17–26.

    Jones, R., Culver, D.C. & Kane, T.C. (1992) Are parallel morphologies of cave organisms the result of similar selection pressures? Evolution, 46, 353–365.

    Karaman, G. (1974) Contribution to the knowledge of the Amphipoda. Genus Synurella Wrzes in Yugoslavia with remarks on its all world known species, their synonymy, bibliography and distribution (fam. Gammaridae), Poljoprivreda Sumarstvo, 20, 83–133

    Koenemann, S. & Holsinger, J.R. (2001) Systematics of the North American subterranean amphipod genus Bactrurus (Crangonyctidae). Beaufortia, 51, 1–56.

    Kornobis, E. & Pálsson, S. (2011) Discordance in variation of the ITS region and the mitochondrial COI gene in the subterranean amphipod /Crangonyx islandicus/. /Journal of Molecular Evolution/, 73, 34-44.

    Kornobis, E., Pálsson, S., Kristjánsson, B.K. & Svavarsson J. (2010) Molecular evidence of the survival of subterranean amphipods (Arthropoda) during Ice Age underneath glaciers in Iceland. Molecular Ecology, 19, 2516–2530.

    Kornobis, E., Pálsson, S., Sidorov, D., Holsinger, J.R. & Kristjánsson, B.K. (2011) Molecular taxonomy and phylogenetic affinities of two groundwater amphipods, Crangonyx islandicus and Crymostygius thingvallensis, endemic to Iceland. Molecular phylogenetics and evolution, 58, 527–539.

    Kristjansson, B.K. & Svavarsson, J. (2004) Crymostygidae, a new family of subterranean freshwater gammaridean amphipods (Crustacea) recorded from subarctic Europe. Journal of Natural History, 38, 1881–1894.

    Mantel, N. (1967) The detection of disease clustering and a generalized regression approach. Cancer Research, 27, 209– 220.

    McKenna, M.C. (1983) Holarctic landmass rearrangement, cosmic events, and Cenozoic terrestrial organisms. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 70, 459–489.

    Messouli, M. (2006) The first African Crangonyctidae, Crangonyx africanus nov. sp. (Crustacea Amphipoda) in the groundwaters of Western Morocco: systematics and biogeographical implications. Subterranean Biology, 4, 67–78.

    Ollier, S., Couteron, P. & Chessel, D. (2006) Orthonormal transform to decompose the variance of a life-history trait across a phylogenetic tree. Biometrics, 62, 471–477.

    Paradis, E., Claude, J. & Strimmer K. (2004) APE: analyses of phylogenetics and evolution in R language. Bioinformatics, 20, 289–290.

    R Development Core Team (2010) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna.

    Riedlecker, E.I., Ashton, G.V. & Ruiz, G.M. (2009) Geometric morphometric analysis discriminates native and non-native species of Caprellidae in western North America. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 89, 535–542.

    Sidorov, D.A. & Holsinger, J.R. (2007) Amurocrangonyx, a new genus of subterranean amphipod (Crangonyctidae) from the Russian Far East, with a redescription of the poorly known Crangonyx arsenjevi and comments on biogeographic relationships. Journal of Crustacean Biology, 27, 660–669.

    Svavarsson, J. & Kristjánsson, B.K. (2006) Crangonyx islandicus sp. nov., a subterranean freshwater amphipod (Crustacea, Amphipoda, Crangonyctidae) from springs in lava fields in Iceland. Zootaxa, 1365, 1–17.

    Väinölä, R., Witt, J.D.S., Grabowski, M., Bradbury J.H., Jazdzewski, K. & Sket, B. (2008) Global diversity of amphipods (Amphipoda; Crustacea) in freshwater. Hydrobiologia, 595, 241–255.

    Zhang, J. & Holsinger, J.R (2003) Systematics of the freshwater amphipod genus Crangonyx (Crangonyctidae) in North America. Virginia Museum of Natural History, Memoir 6, 274 pp.