Major climatic changes in the Pleistocene had significant effects on marine organisms and the environments in which they lived. The presence of divergent patterns of demographic history even among phylogenetically closely-related species sharing climatic changes raises questions as to the respective influence of species-specific traits on population structure. In this work we tested whether the lifestyle of Antarctic notothenioid benthic and pelagic fish species from the Southern Ocean influenced the concerted population response to Pleistocene climatic fluctuations. This was done by a comparative analysis of sequence variation at the cyt b and S7 loci in nine newly sequenced and four re-analysed species. We found that all species underwent more or less intensive changes in population size but we also found consistent differences between demographic histories of pelagic and benthic species. Contemporary pelagic populations are significantly more genetically diverse and bear traces of older demographic expansions than less diverse benthic species that show evidence of more recent population expansions. Our findings suggest that the lifestyles of different species have strong influences on their responses to the same environmental events. Our data, in conjunction with previous studies showing a constant diversification tempo of these species during the Pleistocene, support the hypothesis that Pleistocene glaciations had a smaller effect on pelagic species than on benthic species whose survival may have relied upon ephemeral refugia in shallow shelf waters. These findings suggest that the interaction between lifestyle and environmental changes should be considered in genetic analyses.
Laboratory of Fish Genetics, Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Rumburska 89, 27721 Libechov, Czech Republic;Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Kvetna 8, 603 65, Brno, Czech Republic;Laboratory of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Genomics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Ch. Deberiotstraat 32, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium;Department of Biochemistry, and Genetics Otago, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand;Laboratory of Fish Genetics, Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Rumburska 89, 27721 Libechov, Czech Republic;Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Kvetna 8, 603 65, Brno, Czech Republic;Centre for Polar Ecology, University of South Bohemia in Ceské Budejovice, Na Zlate stoce 3, 370 05, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic;Life Science Research Centre, Department of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Ostrava, Chittussiho 10, 710 00 Silesian Ostrava, Czech Republic
Recommended Citation:
Eva Kašparová,Anton P. Van de Putte,Craig Marshall,et al. Lifestyle and Ice: The Relationship between Ecological Specialization and Response to Pleistocene Climate Change[J]. PLOS ONE,2015-01-01,10(11)