Morphological and genetic analysis of the Red Hills roach (Cyprinidae: Lavinia symmetricus)

Abstract

We performed a morphological and phylogeneticanalysis of a recently discovered population ofCalifornia roach (Red Hills roach; Cyprinidae:Lavinia symmetricus) to determine if thedegree of separation of these populationswarrants subspecies status. Previousmorphological analysis by Brown et al. (1992)suggested that L. symmetricus from theRed Hills roach type locality (Horton Creek)were different for Principal DiscriminantScores (based on 15 morphological characters)from neighboring populations. Similarly,recent work by our lab on the phylogenetics ofthe putative subspecies of L. symmetricushas revealed that the Red Hills roach appearsreciprocally monophyletic for assayedmitochondrial DNA markers. In addition toperforming further morphological and geneticanalysis of the Red Hills roach, we increasedour sampling effort in the Red Hills region todetermine the distribution of this undescribedputative subspecies. Our morphological resultsare generally in agreement with Brown et al.(1992) except in regards to Horton Creek. Asignificant difference between the two studiesexists for all Horton Creek multivariateanalyses as well as frequency of a presumablyderived character (chisel lip). Our geneticresults also support our previous findings thatthe Red Hills roach is a diagnosible,genetically distinct population. Thephylogenetic analysis suggests that populationson the other side of a large reservoir wererecently connected via gene flow to the RedHills populations.