Genética molecular e ecologia em uma abordagem integrativa para conservação de Octopus insularis Leite & Haimovici, 2008 no Atlântico Tropical

Abstract

The integrative approach applied to species conservation is essential to understand the factors that contribute to population diversification, speciation processes and identification of ecological patterns. To propose a panorama for the conservation of Octopus insularis, a wide distributed species in the Tropical Atlantic, an integrative approach involving phylogeny, phylogeography, Barcoding, climatic niche modeling and landscape genetics was adopted. The present study was performed in 15 localities of the Tropical Atlantic west coast and oceanic islands. It was identified a northward increase in the O. insularis distribution area towards the Caribbean Sea, which confirms high potential of this species to dominate warm and shallow waters. Furthermore, misidentification of the species that compose fisheries stocks in the Gulf of Mexico was detected, which may threaten the endemic species O. maya. By using phylogeny approach with biogeographic interference, it was possible to identify Caribbean Sea as an origin area of O. insularis, which diverged from others congeners after the uplift of Isthmus of Panama. Tree clades formed by transisthmian species confirmed the importance of this geological event on speciation processes in octopod. The influence of the historical e future climate changes on distribution and expansion of O. insularis populations was analyzed by ecological niche modeling in five temporal scenarios. The analysis revealed a climatic niche expansion of O. insularis towards temperate regions on global warming scenarios. Whereas, phylogeography and population structure showed four populations/stocks well delimited, mainly due to South Equatorial Current and seamounts. These results corroborate the Isolation by Distance hypothesis. The present results allowed a holistic view, including genetic, ecology and oceanographic factors, which influences O. insularis life history. Those findings can help to build an actual panorama of species conservation and regulation, as well, to suggest future management measures to attenuate possible consequence of global climatic changes.