ESR 7:167-174 (2009) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/esr00117
How many species of goliath grouper are there? Cryptic genetic divergence in a threatened marine fish and the resurrection of a geopolitical species
M. T. Craig1,*, R. T. Graham2, R. A. Torres3, J. R. Hyde4, M. O. Freitas5, B. P. Ferreira6, M. Hostim-Silva7, L. C. Gerhardinger8, A. A. Bertoncini9, D. R. Robertson10
ABSTRACT: The goliath grouper Epinephelus itajara (Epinephelidae) is an exceptionally large marine fish that inhabits sub-tropical and tropical waters of the Americas and western Africa. Due to a lack of readily observable morphological variation in specimens across its range, the goliath grouper has been regarded as a single species. We tested the hypothesis that Pacific and West Atlantic populations constitute a single species by analyzing nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequence data. We found numerous fixed genetic differences for mitochondrial loci between Pacific and West Atlantic goliath grouper (genetic distance D ≈ 3.5% at 16S and D ≈ 6% at cytochrome b; ϕst = 0.98 [p < 0.001] for 16S and ϕst = 0.98 [p < 0.001] for cytochrome b). The nuclear S7 intron showed 3 fixed nucleotide differences between Pacific and West Atlantic populations. Within the West Atlantic, we found few absolute genetic differences (D < 0.01 at 16S and D < 0.02 at cytochrome b), but statistically significant population structure based on haplotype frequency data (ϕst = 0.04 [p = 0.05] at 16S; ϕst = 0.14 [p < 0.001] at cytochrome b). These data indicate that (1) goliath grouper in the West Atlantic are subdivided into discrete populations, (2) goliath grouper populations in the Pacific and western Atlantic represent 2 (or more) distinct species, and (3) these distinct populations/species require separate management and conservation strategies. We resurrect the species Epinephelus quinquefasciatus (Bocourt 1868) for Pacific goliath grouper.
KEY WORDS: Epinephelus itajara · Epinephelus quinquefasciatus · Phylogeography · Epinephelidae
Full text in pdf format  | Cite this article as: Craig MT, Graham RT, Torres RA, Hyde JR and others (2009) How many species of goliath grouper are there? Cryptic genetic divergence in a threatened marine fish and the resurrection of a geopolitical species. Endang Species Res 7:167-174. https://doi.org/10.3354/esr00117
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