New taxa of freshwater mussels (Unionidae) from a species-rich but overlooked evolutionary hotspot in Southeast Asia.

ABSTRACT: Southeast Asia harbors a unique and diverse freshwater fauna of Mesozoic origin, which is under severe threat of extinction because of rapid economic development and urbanization. The largest freshwater basins of the region are certainly the primary evolutionary hotspots and they attract the most attention as key biodiversity areas for conservation. In contrast, medium-sized rivers are considered low-importance areas with secondary biodiversity, whose faunas originated via founder events from larger basins during the Pleistocene, although such a scenario has never been tested by using a phylogenetic approach. In this investigation, we used freshwater mussels (Unionidae) as a model to estimate the levels of endemism within the Sittaung, a little-known remote basin in Myanmar, compared with

SUBMITTER: Bolotov IN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5599626 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature