Fifteen species in one: deciphering the Brachionus plicatilis species complex (Rotifera, Monogononta) through DNA taxonomy
Understanding patterns and processes in biological diversity is a critical task given current and rapid environmental change. Such knowledge is even more essential when the taxa under consideration are important ecological and evolutionary models. One of these cases is the monogonont rotifer cryptic species complex Brachionus plicatilis, which is by far the most extensively studied group of rotifers, is widely used in aquaculture, and is known to host a large amount of unresolved diversity. Here we collate a dataset of previously available and newly generated sequences of COI and ITS1 for 1273 isolates of the B. plicatilis complex and apply three approaches in DNA taxonomy (i.e. ABGD, PTP, …
Euryhaline Brachionus strains (Rotifera) from tropical habitats: morphology and allozyme patterns
The euryhaline rotifer Brachionus is a complex of sibling species. Although many investigations have been carried out in the past, the relationships among the Spanish species, the tropical SS strains and the clusters previously described, remained unknown. In this study, allozyme data for five populations from the tropics and two from Spanish lagoons — one of them B. ibericus and the other B. rotundiformis — were combined with data from the previous studies. Cluster analysis based on genetic distance allowed the 74 strains to be divided into two major groups. One group was associated with B. plicatilis-like strains, and the other group was associated with B. rotundiformis and B. ibericus. T…