The Assembly and Analysis of a Reference Library Based on the Mitochondrial COI Gene Nucleotide Sequences for Delimitation of Sand Lance Species (Uranoscopiformes: Ammodytidae) from the Northern Hemisphere

Abstract

Sand lances of the Northern Hemisphere (Uranoscopiformes: Ammodytidae) are shelf-dwelling fish characterized by cryptic diversity at the species level that show paraphyletic relationships at the genus level. Recently, they have drawn the attention of taxonomists due to the widespread use of molecular genetic methods in taxonomy. In the present study, a reference library of mitochondrial COI gene nucleotide sequences for eight sand lance species of the genus Ammodytes and two species of the genus Hyperoplus has been assembled and analyzed using the distance-based (ABGD, comparison of genetic distances) and topological (PTP) criteria. These species identification methods are shown to be reliable for high values of interspecific divergence (five species of Ammodytes and one species of Hyperoplus), whereas for the species that exhibit a low divergence (A. tobianus and H. lanceolatus) the topological criteria exceed the distance-based ones. The species A. personatus has been found in the eastern Sea of Okhotsk for the first time.