Genetic population structure in Nacella magellanica: evidence of rapid range expansion throughout the entire species distribution on the Atlantic coast

DE ARANZAMENDI MARÍA CARLA; BASTIDA RICARDO O; GARDENAL CRISTINA NOEMÍ

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL MARINE BIOLOGY AND ECOLOGY

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2014

0022-0981

Nacella magellanica, the most abundant limpet in theMagellanic biogeographic Province of Argentina and Chile,is characterized by a noticeable variability in shellmorphology and color patterns. Ecological as well as evolutionaryfeatures make this limpet an interesting species for evolutionary and population genetic studies. Here, arbitrarynuclear molecular markers, inter-simple sequence repeat-PCR, are used to analyze the population geneticstructure in 14 localities of N. magellanica along 2900 km on the Atlantic coast of the Magellanic Province. Wecompare the present results, based on nuclear markers, with previous findings of a phylogeographic study thatused the mitochondrial COI gene. All the results presented here suggest little genetic structure withinN. magellanica, with moderate to high genetic connectivity among populations. The short time elapsed sincethe expansion of this species plus a possible long larval lifespan and the oceanographic and environmentalconditions of the Magellanic Province might explain the lack of genetic structuring and the low levels of geneticdifferentiation in the species throughout its distribution range along the Argentine coast.