Next-generation phylogeography of the widespread swimming crab Callinectes ornatus Ordway, 1863

Abstract

Phylogeography has witnessed significant gains recently because of improvement in DNA sequencing technologies. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) can increase the amount of information generating huge data sets helping us to understand ecology and evolution of non-model species. Phylogeographical patterns in marine realm is affected by several abiotic and biotic factor. Dispersal potential has been commonly used to do inferences about how the current genetic distribution is organized in geographical space, but many criticisms has been done over these affirmatives. However, marine invertebrates phylogeography are still poorly characterized in comparison to terrestrial ones. Decapods, in this sense, are a potential model to explore phylogeographical patterns in marine environments because of their biological features and great distributional range. Here, we propose to use an NGS approach (ddRAD-seq) to better understand phylogeography on Tropical Western Atlantic area, specially concerning the effects of physical barriers and differentiation among recognized marine provinces. We are going to use the swimming crab Callinectes ornatus Ordway, 1738, because of its geographical range (South Brazil to USA) and its great dispersal potential. We believe that this BEPE proposal will contribute to the current doctorate project of the candidate, so as with the field of marine phylogeography. Besides that, the intership will provide huge gains for academic and professional career of the candidate, and the opportunity to contact international researchers, learn new techniques and the possibility to apply them in Brazilian research.