Dataset Information

DNA capture reveals transoceanic gene flow in endangered river sharks.

ABSTRACT: For over a hundred years, the "river sharks" of the genus Glyphis were only known from the type specimens of species that had been collected in the 19th century. They were widely considered extinct until populations of Glyphis-like sharks were rediscovered in remote regions of Borneo and Northern Australia at the end of the 20th century. However, the genetic affinities between the newly discovered Glyphis-like populations and the poorly preserved, original museum-type specimens have never been established. Here, we present the first (to our knowledge) fully resolved, complete phylogeny of Glyphis that includes both archival-type specimens and modern material. We used a sensitive DNA hybridization capture method to obtain complete mitochondrial genomes from all of our samples and show that three of the five described river shark species are probably conspecific and widely distributed in Southeast Asia. Furthermore we show that there has been recent gene flow between locations that are separated by large oceanic expanses. Our data strongly suggest marine dispersal in these species, overturning the widely held notion that river sharks are restricted to freshwater. It seems that species in the genus Glyphis are euryhaline with an ecology similar to the bull shark, in which adult individuals live in the ocean while the young grow up in river habitats with reduced predation pressure. Finally, we discovered a previously unidentified species within the genus Glyphis that is deeply divergent from all other lineages, underscoring the current lack of knowledge about the biodiversity and ecology of these mysterious sharks.

SUBMITTER: Li C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4629339 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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DNA capture reveals transoceanic gene flow in endangered river sharks.

Li Chenhong C Corrigan Shannon S Yang Lei L Straube Nicolas N Harris Mark M Hofreiter Michael M White William T WT Naylor Gavin J P GJ

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20151012 43

For over a hundred years, the "river sharks" of the genus Glyphis were only known from the type specimens of species that had been collected in the 19th century. They were widely considered extinct until populations of Glyphis-like sharks were rediscovered in remote regions of Borneo and Northern Australia at the end of the 20th century. However, the genetic affinities between the newly discovered Glyphis-like populations and the poorly preserved, original museum-type specimens have never been e ...[more]

PMID: 26460025

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Project description:Abstract Catch-and-release fishing is an important component of ecotourism industries and scientific research worldwide, but its total impact on animal physiology, health and survival is understudied for many species of fishes, particularly sharks. We combined biologging and blood chemistry to explore how this fisheries interaction influenced the physiology of two widely distributed, highly migratory shark species: the blue shark (Prionace glauca) and the tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier). Nineteen sharks were caught by drum line or rod-and-reel angling; subcutaneous body temperature measurements were taken immediately upon capture, with six individuals also providing subsequent subcutaneous body temperature measurements via biologging as they swam freely for several hours post-release. We found that short-term capture caused shark body temperature to increase significantly and rapidly, with increases of 0.6°C–2.7°C for blue sharks (mean, 1.2 ± 0.6°C) and 0.5°C–0.9°C for tiger sharks (mean, 0.7 ± 0.2°C) and with capture-induced heating rates of blue sharks averaging 0.3°C min−1 but as high as 0.8°C min−1. Blue shark body temperature was even higher deeper into the white muscle. These heating rates were three to eight times faster than maximum rates encountered by our biologging sharks swimming through thermally stratified waters and faster than most acute heating experiments conducted with ectotherms in laboratory experiments. Biologging data showed that body temperatures underwent gradual decline after release, returning to match water temperatures 10–40 mins post-release. Blood biochemistry showed variable lactate/glucose levels following capture; however, these concentrations were not correlated with the magnitude of body temperature increase, nor with body size or hooking time. These perturbations of the natural state could have immediate and longer-term effects on the welfare and ecology of sharks caught in catch-and-release fisheries and we encourage further study of the broader implications of this reported phenomenon.

Project description:The dentition of elasmobranchs (sharks, skates and rays) is uniquely productive, capable of both rapid and continuous, lifelong regeneration. Elasmobranchs represent an important group of vertebrates with a deep evolutionary history, possessing several ancient and basal characters, i.e., the continuously regenerative dentition from a specialized dental lamina. The dental lamina is an expanded component of the oral epithelia that is responsible for initiating and producing new teeth among all toothed-vertebrates. In sharks, this dynamic epithelial unit is permanent and continuous – meaning it extends to cover the entirety of each jaw (jaw-wide) and develops early during embryogenesis and retained to produce teeth for the life of the shark. It is rare for a truly embryonic vertebrate tissue to be retained for its original function for the life of the organism. The dental lamina in sharks is unique and houses teeth in a developmental series from the deepest part, where teeth are initiated, through stages of tooth development in the form of a related, family of teeth to eruption and functionality of the advanced teeth at the jaw margin. How teeth are made and regenerated is an important question in vertebrate biology; here we investigated this question in the small spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula), a new model in the field of developmental biology. Specifically, we divided the shark dental lamina into stage-compartments as follows: (i) the initiation site – the successional lamina (SL); (ii) the early developing teeth (ET); (iii) the late stage developing teeth (LT); (iv) the tooth-taste junction between the superficial oral and dental epithelium at the jaw margin that separates the taste territory and the dental lamina proper (TTJ); and basi-hyal oral epithelium that is strictly non-dental and only contains taste buds (BHTB). These 5 compartments each house both a shared and unique signature of gene transcripts. This study aims to understand the transcriptomic basis of continuous tooth regeneration in the shark. In this study we combine X-ray computed tomography, classic histology, insitu hybridization, immunohistochemistry, and functional assays of novel markers, and de novo and genome guided transcriptome assemblies for each of these 5 dental lamina compartments of the hatchling (stage 34) catshark (S. canicula).

Dataset Information

DNA capture reveals transoceanic gene flow in endangered river sharks.

Publications

DNA capture reveals transoceanic gene flow in endangered river sharks.

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