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Genetic diversity and population structure of the Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis in its native range

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Abstract

The Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis is an indigenous and economically important species in China, but can also be found as invasive species in Europe and America. Mitten crabs have been exploited extensively as a food resource since the 1990s. Despite its ecological and economic importance, the genetic structure of native mitten crab populations is not well understood. In this paper, we investigated the genetic structure of mitten crab populations in China by screening samples from ten locations covering six river systems at six microsatellite loci. Our results provide further evidence that mitten crabs from the River Nanliujiang in Southern China are a genetically differentiated population within the native range of Eriocheir, and should be recognized as a separate taxonomic unit. In contrast, extremely low levels of genetic differentiation and no significant geographic population structure were found among the samples located north of the River Nanliujiang. Based on the reproductive biology of mitten crabs and the geography of their habitat we argue that both natural and human-mediated gene flow are unlikely to fully account for the similar allele frequency distributions at microsatellite loci. Large population sizes of mitten crabs suggest instead that a virtual absence of genetic drift and significant homoplasy of microsatellite alleles have contributed to the observed pattern. Furthermore, a coalescent-based maximum likelihood method indicated a more than two-fold lower effective population size of the Southern population compared to the Northern Group and low but significant levels of gene flow between both areas.

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Acknowledgments

The first author received an ICP Ph.D. scholarship from the Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR), Belgium in support of this research. The native sample collection was supported by Tianjin Science and Technology Development Fund and the International Cooperation Fund (Project No. 033803511 and 033803511G) and Tianjin Higher Education Science and Technology Development fund (2004BA31), China. The authors would like to express their gratitude to Prof. S. F. Li from Shanghai Fisheries University, China, for providing one of the native samples. M. Harley provided assistance in the laboratory. D. Weetman and C. van Oosterhout provided useful comments on the manuscript. Sampling protocols and laboratory procedures complied with the current laws of China and the UK, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Chemistry of Tianjin, College of Marine Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, 300457, Tianjin, China

    Liying Sui

  2. Laboratory of Aquaculture and Artemia Reference Center, Ghent University, Rozier 44, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Liying Sui, Peter Bossier & Patrick Sorgeloos

  3. State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100093, Beijing, China

    Fumin Zhang

  4. Key Laboratory of Aqua-Ecology and Aquaculture, Tianjin Agricultural University, 300384, Tianjin, China

    Xiaomei Wang

  5. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK

    Bernd Hänfling

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  1. Liying Sui
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  2. Fumin Zhang
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Correspondence to Bernd Hänfling.

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Communicated by S. Uthicke.

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Sui, L., Zhang, F., Wang, X. et al. Genetic diversity and population structure of the Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis in its native range. Mar Biol 156, 1573–1583 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-009-1193-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-009-1193-2

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