SpringerLink
Log in

Endemism or synonymy in genus Belone (Belonidae)? An integrative analysis on North-Eastern Mediterranean populations

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Marine Biodiversity Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Garfish Belone belone (Linnaeus, 1761) are distributed over a wide area covering all the East Atlantic coasts including the North and Baltic Seas and the entire Mediterranean basin. Researchers have presented different opinions regarding the presence of subspecies and endemic species of garfish due to certain morphological variations found in Mediterranean populations up to the current day. The purpose of this study is to clarify the taxonomic status of Belone euxini Günther, 1866, described as the Black Sea endemic by Günther (1866) and Belone acus Risso, 1827, described as the Mediterranean gar fish population by Risso (1827) with an integrative perspective. B. belone specimens were sampled from 12 localities in the North-Eastern Mediterranean. The congeneric Belone svetovidovi Collette & Parin, 1970, specimens were sampled at different locations in the Eastern Aegean Sea and included molecular analyses in order to determine the interspecific distance between Belone species. Detailed morphological description and genetics are provided for B. belone populations. Based on the results, it can be supported that the differences observed between B. belone populations are within the limits of intraspecific variation thus indicating that there are no distinct populations at the species level in the Mediterranean basin.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alaya BH, Sanna D, Casu M, Biagi F, Francalacci P et al (2011) Analysis of meristic and mitochondrial DNA variation in Syngnathus abaster (Teleostea: Syngnathidae) from two western Mediterranean lagoons. Biologia 66(6):1140–1147

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allendorf FW (1988) Conservation biology of fishes. Conserv Biol 2:145–148

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bănărescu P (1964) Fauna Republici Populare Romine. Pisces-Osteichthyes, vol 13. Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romine, Bucuresti, p 953

    Google Scholar 

  • Bariche M, Fricke R (2020) The marine ichthyofauna of Lebanon: an annotated checklist, history, biogeography, and conservation status. Zootaxa 4775(1):1–157

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bilecenoğlu M, Taskavak E, Mater S, Kaya M (2002) Checklist of the marine fishes of Turkey. Zootaxa 113:1–194

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bilecenoğlu M, Kaya M, Cihangir B, Çiçek E (2014) An updated checklist of the marine fishes of Turkey. Turk J Zool 38:1–29

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carneiro M, Martins R, Reiner F, Batista I (2019) Ichthyofauna of Portugal: taxonomic diversity, common and scientific names of marine fishes. Volume 1. Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera, Lisboa, 376 pp.

  • Clarke KR, Gorley RN (2015) PRIMER v7: user manual/tutorial. PRIMER-EPlymouth

  • Collette B (2003) Family Belonidae Bonaparte 1832 – needlefishes. Calif Acad Sci Annotated Checklists Fish 16:1–22

    Google Scholar 

  • Collette BB, Parin NV (1970) Needlefishes (Belonidae) of the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. Atl Rep 11:1–60

    Google Scholar 

  • Collette BB (2016) Order Beloniformes. Belonidae p. 2118–2126. In: The living marine resources of the Eastern Central Atlantic. v.3. Carpenter and De Angelis (eds)

  • Collette BB, Parin NV (1986) Belonidae. p. 604–609. In: Fishes of the North-eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Vol. II. Whitehead PJP, Bauchot ML, Hureau JC, Nielsen J and Tortonese E (Eds) UNESCO

  • Dieuzeide R, Novella M, Roland J (1954) Belonidae. p 109–111. In: Catalogue des poissons des Côtes Algériennes (III – Ostéptérygiens). Bull Trav Publ Stat Agricult Peche Castiglione

  • Dorman JA (1987) Belone svetovidovi Collette and Parin: a species of garfish new to northern Europe. JMBA 67:67–85

    Google Scholar 

  • Dorman JA (1991) Investigations into the biology of the garfish, Belone belone (L.), in Swedish waters. J Fish Biol 39:59–69

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fricke R, Bilecenoğlu M, Sarı HM (2007) Annotated checklist of fish and lamprey species (Gnathostomata and Petromyzontomorphi) of Turkey, including a Red List of threatened and declining species. Stuttg Beitr Zur Naturkunde Ser A (biol) 706:1–169

    Google Scholar 

  • Fricke R, Eschmeyer WN, van der Laan R (eds) (2023) Eschmeyer’s catalog of fishes: genera, species, references Electronic version. (http://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/ichthyology/catalog/fishcatmain.asp). Accessed 03/2023

  • Froese R, Pauly D (2023) FishBase. World Wide Web electronic publication www.fishbase.org. Accessed 3 2023

  • Günther A (1866) Catalogue of fishes in the British Museum. Catalogue of the Physostomi, containing the families Salmonidae, Percopsidae, Galaxidae, Mormyridae, Gymnarchidae, Esocidae, Umbridae, Scombresocidae, Cyprinodontidae, in the collection of the British Museum. 6:i-xv +1–368. p253

  • Hall TA (1999) BioEdit: a user-friendly biological sequence alignment editör and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT. Nucleic Acids Symp Ser 41:95–98

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Jardas I (1996) Jadranska ihtiofauna (the Adriatic ichthyofauna). Školska knjiga. Zagreb p. 536

  • Keskin Ç (2010) A review of fish fauna in the Turkish Black Sea. J Black Sea/mediterr Environ 16(2):195–210

    Google Scholar 

  • Kumar S, Stecher G, Li M, Knyaz C, Tamura K (2018) MEGA X: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis across computing platforms. Mol Biol Evol 35(6):1547–1549. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msy096

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Kumar SP, Narvekar J, Nuncio M, Kumar A, Ramaiah N et al (2009) What drives the biological productivity of the Northern Indian Ocean? Indian Ocean Biogeochemical Processes and Ecological Variability. p. 33–56. Geophysical Monograph Series vol. 185, JD Wiggert et al. (eds), AGU, Washington, D.C.

  • Librado P, Rozas J (2009) DnaSP v5: a software for comprehensive analysis of DNA polymorphism data. Bioinformatics 25(11):451–1452

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lipej L, Dulčić J (2010) Checklist of the Adriatic Sea fishes. Zootaxa 2589:1–92

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meriç N, Altun Ö (1999) The garfish, Belone svetovidovi Collette and Parin, 1970, new to the Aegean Sea. Isr J Zool 45:423–426

    Google Scholar 

  • Murta AG (2000) Morphological variation of horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus) in the Iberian and North Africa Atlantic: implications for stock identification. ICES J Mar Sci 57:1240–1248

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ninua NSH, Japoshvili B (2008) Check list of fishes of Georgia. Proc Inst Zoologia Georgia 23:163–176

    Google Scholar 

  • Oruç AÇ, Engin S (2018) The taxonomic status of the Black Sea and Marmara Sea populations of the Broadnosed Pipefish Syngnathus cf. argentatus Pallas (Teleostei: Syngnathidae) based on morphological and molecular characters. Zool Middle East 64(2):112–123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parin NV (1973) Belonidae (pp. 258–260), Scomberesocidae (pp. 261–262), Exocoetidae (pp. 263–267), Hemiramphidae (pp. 268–269). In: Hureau & Monod 1973

  • Parin NV, Evseenko SA, Vasil’eva ED (2014) Fishes of Russian seas: annotated catalogue. KMK Scientific Press Moscow 53:733

  • Risso A (1827) Histoire naturelle des principales productions de l’Europe méridionale, et particulièrement de celles des environs de Nice et des Alpes maritimes. FG Levrault, Paris & Strasbourg v3(i-xvi):1–480. Pls. 1–16

  • Sanna D, Biagi F, Alaya H, Maltagliati F, Addis A et al (2013) Mitochondrial DNA variability of the pipefish Syngnathus abaster. J Fish Biol 82(3):856–876

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Slastenenko E (1936) Revue de la faune ichthyologique de la Mer Noire. Ann Sci Univ de Jassy XXII:280–296

    Google Scholar 

  • Slastenenko E (1939) Les poissons de la mer Noire et de la mer d’Azov. Ann Sc Univ de Jassy XXV:196

    Google Scholar 

  • Slastenenko E (1956) Karadeniz havzası balıkları [Fishes of the Black Sea Basin]. Et ve Balık Kurumu Yayınları, İstanbul 711 pp

  • Svetovidov AN (1964) Handbook of the fauna of the USSR, fishes of the Black Sea. Izdatel’stvo Nauka, Moscow, p 550

    Google Scholar 

  • Tortonese E (1970) Fauna d’Italia. XI. Osteichtyes, part 2. Ediz Calderini, Bologna 636 pp.

  • Tzeng TD (2004) Morphological variation between populations of spotted mackerel (Scomber australicus) of Taiwan. Fish Res 68:45–55

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vasil'eva ED (2007) Fish of the Black Sea. Key to marine, brackish-water, euryhaline, and anadromous species with color illustrations, collected by S.V.Bogorodsky. VNIRO Publishing, Moscow, p 240

  • Ward RD, Zemlak TS, Innes BH, Last PR, Hebert PDN (2005) DNA barcoding Australia’s fish species. Phil Trans R Soc B: Biol Sci 360(1462):1847–1857

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Wimberger PH (1992) Plasticity of fish body shaped the effects of diet, development, family and age in two species of Geophagus (Pisces: Cichlidae). Biol J Linnean Soc 45:197–218

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wirtz P, Brito A, Falcón JM, Freitas R, Fricke R et al (2013) The coastal fishes of the Cape Verde Islands - new records and an annotated check-list. Spixiana 6(1):113–142

    Google Scholar 

  • Zorica B, ČikešKeč V (2011) Phenotypic characteristics of garfish Belone belone Linnaeus, 1761) in the Adriatic Sea. Acta Adriat 52(2):269–278

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This study has been supported by the Scientific And Technological Research Council Of Türkiye, TÜBİTAK (Grant No: 121 Y 553).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Fisheries, Izmir Katip Celebi University, Havaalanı Sosesi Cd. AOSB, Balatcik, 35620, Cigli, İzmir, Turkey

    Dilruba Seyhan Ozturk

Authors
  1. Dilruba Seyhan Ozturk
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dilruba Seyhan Ozturk.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

No animal testing was performed during this study.

Sampling and field studies

All necessary permits for sampling and observational field studies have been obtained by the authors from the competent authorities.

Data availability

Data are available in the paper and supplementary files (table and figures). Specimen data with all details on vouchers of specimens with their CO1 sequences and haplotypes are available as a dataset in the GenBank database with accession numbers mentioned in the Supplementary Table.

Additional information

Communicated by J. Renz

This article is a contribution to the Topical Collection Discovering the water column: integrated taxonomic approaches for measuring marine pelagic biodiversity.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Seyhan Ozturk, D. Endemism or synonymy in genus Belone (Belonidae)? An integrative analysis on North-Eastern Mediterranean populations. Mar. Biodivers. 54, 56 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-024-01448-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-024-01448-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation