Hello NANFAers, Attached is a newly published molecular phylogeny of Boleosoma. As you will see it reveals more questions than it answers! This is why I think that historical biology is so much fun. My hunch is that E. nigrum on the Atlantic Slope is not closely related to E. nigrum, but has been classified as this species due to similarities in squamation and dorsal fin ray counts.

Tom

Tom, you still gotta upload the paper! I'm curious to read it.

Here it is!

Thanks for sharing that, even if it did make my head hurt. Do you plan to do further analysis of this group?

Thanks for sharing that, even if it did make my head hurt. Do you plan to do further analysis of this group?

Thanks Newt. Absolutely, we will be following up this study with a more intensive analysis of E. olmstedi. I would like to get a student, or colleague interested in a more detailed analysis of E. nigrum. Morgan Raley, Wayne Starnes, and I are going to try and investigate E. nigrum on the Atlantic Slope. An absolutely killer project would be to investigate the speciation of E. perlongum, specifically determining if there is gene flow with adjacent populations of E. olmstedi. This may be the only example of "lacustrine" speciation in darters.


T$

Edited by TomNear, 12 August 2009 - 12:18 PM.

That's not a big surprise if E. nigrum on the slope is different from the non-slope, right? One more positively identified mussel host that isn't the same species as people have advertised it to be and probably tried to infest unsuccessfully!

Just on first glance, the structuring of the E. olmstedi tree's is much like that of Atlantic slope mussels, but what is going on with that E. nigrum (Great Lakes), E. olmstedi (Susq.) group?!?!?! Isn't that near the area of NY where you have similar populations of E. blennioides that are also found in the Susq. drainage? Here is a wild speculation...Is it possible that like other darters (E. zonale and blennioides) in the Susq. above Conowingo dam, these may not really be native E. olmstedi, populations have hybridized (evident between E. zonale and olmstedi), or both now unknowingly exist (and E. nigrum was actually collected)? Any speculation as to how that may be (re-)structured with a Bay coastal plain or Potomac drainage sequence?

Edited by ashtonmj, 12 August 2009 - 08:22 PM.

And similarly, if it's a different species it would also have different parasite species through coevolutionary processes.

Well yeah then there is that too...what I was vaugely referencing was a Watters and O'Dee paper from the mid 90s that listed E. nigrum (from NC) as a host of Elliptio fisheriana. The taxonomy and relationships of lanceolate Elliptio mussels are in a far bigger mess then fish so first I wondered if the mussels tested in NC were the same as those found in Maryland. One reason is because E. nigrum is not found anywhere near Elliptio fisheriana in Maryland, but one could reasonably hypothesize the congeneric E. olmstedi may also serve as a host. The other species native to the Atlantic slope identified as a host is also not found in Maryland. So you can see the crux...I actually wrote a little article about it basically saying the mussel obviously didn't arrive with non-natives, but there are no known native hosts in the state, here are the congenerics, but they aren't found very often with the mussels...

My experience is that the fish taxonomy used by malacologists, especially ones that were not fish people first, tends to lag about 5 years behind. Not trying to say anything negative, it just is what it is. For example, I've seen alternative genera for Noturus published within the past 10 years, and there is a whole lot of 'banded sculpin, slimy sculpin, mottled sculpin' accounts where they are no longer recognized as such or probably aren't.

Sorry to derail the thread! .... a cool (probably not) project for someone interested in rectifying taxonomical problems would be to have them sift through all this mussel-host literature and update it because it has serious management implications.

The Neuse/Tar/Roanoke basins in NC/VA have a real knack for creating new species out of whatever gets into them, especially those derived from ancestors across the Blue Ridge: pinewoods shiner, crescent shiner, carolina madtom, neuse waterdog, Roanoke darter, rustyside sucker, speckled killifish, lots more and i'll let Matt say about the mussels. Seems likely that johnny darter, mimic shiner, redhorses, etc could just as easily be distinct from their OH/TN cousins and maybe even from those in northern atlantic slope rivers.

Edited by gerald, 13 August 2009 - 10:36 AM.

An absolutely killer project would be to investigate the speciation of E. perlongum, specifically determining if there is gene flow with adjacent populations of E. olmstedi. This may be the only example of "lacustrine" speciation in darters.


Michael McCartney from UNCW was doing this I think and had a manuscript ready to go. Not sure if it ever got published.