Meeting Abstract
P1.165 Friday, Jan. 4 Wide range of genetic variability of mitochondrial COI in introduced species of copepods in the San Francisco Estuary ALVES, C; PERRY, E*; CRAIG, C; MILLER-SIMS, V; KIMMERER, W; COHEN, C/S; Connecticut College; Romberg Tiburon Center, Dept. of Biology, San Francisco State University; Romberg Tiburon Center, Dept. of Biology, San Francisco State University; Romberg Tiburon Center, Dept. of Biology, San Francisco State University; Romberg Tiburon Center, Dept. of Biology, San Francisco State University; Romberg Tiburon Center, Dept. of Biology, San Francisco State University eperry09@mail.sfsu.edu
The San Francisco Estuary has one of the highest global concentrations of introduced species, including species of Asian copepods that now serve as the main food source for native fishes. Introduced species are often expected to show reduced genetic diversity and it has been hypothesized that high genetic diversity is correlated with invasion success. We examined the genetic diversity of seven introduced copepod species (n=18-33) with the barcoding gene cytochrome c oxidase I (COI). Previous work found unusually high haplotype diversity (0.997) the introduced copepod, Tortanus dextrilobatus. In this study, a native congener of T. dextrilobatus, T. discaudatus, was also extremely diverse (1.000, n=14), suggesting that high COI diversity may be characteristic of this genus. Haplotype diversity of the remaining species was widely distributed, ranging from 0.177 to 0.856. Variation in COI diversity may reflect diversity of source populations, invasion history, life history traits such as DNA repair mechanisms, post-arrival demographic variation including responses to selection, or idiosyncrasies in COI evolution. Ongoing work is aimed at comparison of these patterns to other loci in the nuclear genome to test for concordant patterns of variation. The range of variation among these estuarine invaders in a common habitat offers the opportunity for comparative tests of hypotheses on the origin and maintenance of diversity focused on species with extremely high (~109) population abundance.
