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RESEARCH PRODUCT
Nonmodal scutes patterns in the Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Caretta caretta): a possible epigenetic effect?
Maria Flaminia PersichettiSanto CaracappaMarco ArculeoGiulia CaracappaAnnalisa PisciottaRosa Alduinasubject
0106 biological sciences0301 basic medicineCaretta carettaEcologyEcology (disciplines)Cytosine methylationEpigeneticBiologybiology.organism_classification010603 evolutionary biology01 natural sciencesLoggerhead sea turtleNonmodal scute03 medical and health sciences030104 developmental biologyMediterranean seaLoggerhead sea turtleMediterranean seaThreatened speciesAnimal Science and ZoologyEpigeneticshuman activitiesEcology Evolution Behavior and Systematicsdescription
Eleven specimens of the threatened Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Caretta caretta (L., 1758)) were caught accidentally by fishermen in different parts of Sicily (Mediterranean Sea). Five of them showed an atypical number of carapacial and plastron scutes, making the immediate identification of the specimens as C. caretta difficult. Both genetic and epigenetic analysis were carried out on these specimens. Sequencing of a 649 bp sequence of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene allowed us to classify all the individuals as C. caretta. Epigenetic analysis, performed by evaluating the total level of DNA cytosine methylation, showed a reduced and significant (F = 72.65, p < 0.01) global level of methylated cytosines in the turtles with nonmodal scutes compared with the normal turtles. Our results suggest that the variability in the number of scutes could be dependent on the environmental conditions during embryonic incubation, via an epigenetic mechanism. This finding could have implications in our understanding of the pathways of morphological evolution and diversification in the chelonians.
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-05-01 | Canadian Journal of Zoology |