The phylogeny of killifish genus Aphanius nardo, 1827 (aActinopterygii: Cyprinodontidae) in Turkish freshwater

We investigated the phylogenetic relationships of Aphanius (Pisces: Cyprinodontiformes) genus in Anatolia by analysing 1065 base pair fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene of 107 samples representing 29 populations of nineteen Aphanius species. The derived haplotypes (h: 44) were strictly local and were not shared between species. Phylogenetic relationships reconstructed by neighbor joining, maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony methods are fully congruent, showed the occurence of three main groups. Species and groups are restricted to geologically well-defined units, and are deeply divergent from each other. Our results are in agreement with a previous study of Aphanius that also shows a diversification pattern driven by the Pliocene orogenic events. Present results indicate the effectiveness of mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequences for species identification and the phylogenetic analysis of Aphanius species.