Re: Apisto molecular phylogeny

[Beverly Erlebacher <bae@cs.toronto.edu>]

> Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 13:48:31 -0400
> From: Frauley/Elson <fraulels@minet.ca>
> 
> I think it would be a great idea, with one reticence, that is type
> locality. Because we don't usually have a known collecting location for
> our aquarium fishes, it would greatly weaken a serious scientific study
> of specimens we sent. Suppose we sent two identical aga types and
> discovered we had two different species (I'm told this has happened with
> seemingly identical West African killies). What would that tell us,
> unless we had distribution information on the two forms? 

If the fish are preserved correctly, the students should be able to
key them out, even if the contributor has them misidentified.  If it
turns out that there is a lot of difference molecularly, it may indicates
that there is a lot of variation in that species or that it may really be
a species complex.  You've read these papers, these guys can handwave. :-)

> Killies have
> wonderful codes after their names - they drive hobbyists crazy but they
> have aided scientists studying the fish. I participated in a study like
> the one you're proposing (ie, I pickled and mailed killifish) and it was
> fascinating - my fish turned out to be closely related to a species I
> never would have picked as being in their complex. However, I knew
> exactly where my fish were from, even to the day their ancestors were
> collected because they had a code on them. 

Now I can play devil's advocate and ask how much founder effect and 
inbreeding have caused serious genetic drift from the real wild population, 
causing spurious matches with unrelated strains. :-)

I suspect that most killifish in captivity are many more generations 
removed from the wild than are most apistos, and an apisto species in
captivity is based on the importation of very many more wild individuals
than a typical killifish strain, which rarely derives from more than a
dozen or two individuals, and often many fewer.

Please give us more info about the study.  Can you tell us the process of
preserving the fish?  Who coordinated it and/or did the actual wet work?

> If a graduate student could be interested first, maybe, but I suspect,
> as a non-scientist, most would balk at it because of this very problem.

Not everybody gets to travel South America accumulating material from
known locations.  Money for pure science is tight.  The dead fish are 
going to waste.  I can try to contact some molecular phylogenists and
find out if it's likely to be of interest or not, but there's no point
if people aren't willing to save and contribute dead fish.  How do people 
feel about doing this, if it looks like the fish could be used for a
project like this?

> Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 13:48:37 -0500
> From: William Vannerson <William_Vannerson@ama-assn.org>
> 
> Another possibility would be to validate and clarify the complexes.  One
> thing that Tomas Hrbek told us regarding his phylogeny work with killies
> is that physical traits, behaviors and adaptations are not always a
> accurate indicator of related species.
> 
> Where this relates to apistos is that fish in a given complex may not be
> closely related at all. A study, even without location, could show the
> relative organizations of different apisto species.

I concur.  In the absence of location data, it may still be possible to 
gain some insight into higher taxonomic levels, such as species groups or 
subgenera, though obviously not at the subspecies level nor differences
over the geographic range of a widespread species like A.agassizi.


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