Phylogenetic Relationships in Vendace and Least Cisco, and Their Distribution Areas in Western Eurasia

Abstract

I conducted a population-genetic study of the Eurasian cisco complex in an area extending from the Baltic Sea to the East-Siberian Sea using 30 enzyme loci. The results indicate that the least cisco (Coregonus sardinella) populations from most rivers of the Kara, Laptev and East-Siberian sea basins are genetically fairly homogeneous, and that the cluster they form is different from the one for the vendace (C. albula) populations from the waterbodies of the Baltic and White seas (Nei's genetic distance (DN) = 0.076). The least cisco and vendace originated from two major phylogenetic lineages of the species occurring as the purest form in the above regions. As a result of the evolution and complex interactions among local populations within the two phylogenetic lineages of cisco at the various stages of Middle and Late Quaternary glaciations, most extant modern populations are hybrid in origin. For example, the Barents Sea populations and the easternmost population from the East-Siberian Sea basin (Kolyma River) emerged as a result of hybridization during the last colonization wave by the least cisco (East Siberian) along the Arctic coast upon cisco's interaction with local ciscoes in the west and east. The White and Kovzhskoye lake populations from the Caspian Sea basin, which form a joint cluster with them, are the hybrids of the local vendace and the descendants of the first wave of least cisco's (West Siberian) expansion to Europe. In this paper, I also discuss the most probable scenarios of cisco's colonization of the study area using paleolimnological reconstructions.