Experimental Crossing Confirms Reproductive Isolation between Cryptic Species within Eulimnogammarus verrucosus (Crustacea: Amphipoda) from Lake Baikal.

ABSTRACT: Ancient lakes are known speciation hotspots. One of the most speciose groups in the ancient Lake Baikal are gammaroid amphipods (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Gammaroidea). There are over 350 morphological species and subspecies of amphipods in Baikal, but the extent of cryptic variation is still unclear. One of the most common species in the littoral zone of the lake, Eulimnogammarus verrucosus (Gerstfeldt, 1858), was recently found to comprise at least three (pseudo)cryptic species based on molecular data. Here, we further explored these species by analyzing their mitogenome-based phylogeny, genome sizes with flow cytometry, and their reproductive compatibility. We found divergent times of millions of years and different genome sizes in the three species (6.1, 6.9 and 8 pg), further confi

SUBMITTER: Drozdova P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9506054 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature