Barcoding Fishes of Argentina: The Progress of the Freshwater Campaign.

ROSSO, JUAN JOSE; MABRAGAÑA, EZEQUIEL; GONZÁLEZ CASTRO, MARIANO; DÍAZ DE ASTARLOA, JUAN MARTÍN

Adelaide

Conferencia; 4th International Barcode of Life Conference; 2011

The freshwater fish fauna of Argentina comprises more than 450 species. Up to now, the campaign to barcoding these species surveyed 57 different environments encompassing 5 of the 11 ichthyogeographic provinces. Almost 600 specimens from more than 100 species were collected. This represents more than 20% of the known ichthyofauna. Our first results demonstrate that barcoding is an efficient tool for species identification of freshwater fishes of the Pampa Plain, Argentina. Based on the neighbour-joining trees of K2P distances, all members of a given genera clustered together. The use of COI sequences (n=195) from 37 putative species allowed us to further discriminate among 34 species. This means that molecular speciesidentification was in concordance with current taxonomical classification in 92% of cases. Moreover, preliminary analysis of released sequences in our project suggests the existence of intra-specific groups. Clusters of species such as Cnesterodon decemmaculatus, Bryconamericus iheringii and Salminus brasiliensis showed individuals with a divergence of 2.4, 5 and 6 % respectively from its conspecifics. This highlights the necessity of further research on these species.Several aspects of the taxonomy of conflicting groups could be further untangled with forthcoming COI sequences. Particularly, the existence of species complex in Hoplias malabaricus, Synbranchus marmoratus, Astyanax fasciatus and Australoheros facetus could be explored.