Abstract
Pachón cave in the Sierra de El Abra, in Northeast Mexico, stands out as hosting the world’s most widely studied cavefish population – with over 500 scholarly articles published about the population. Refugio Cave was recently discovered in the El Abra region. This cave hosts the mysid cave shrimp Spelaeomysis quinterensis and the blind cave tetra fish, Astyanax mexicanus. This study aims to understand how the aquatic community of Refugio Cave es related to other cave populations in the area. For this purpose, the Histone H3 gene of mysid shrimps and the OCA2 gene that confers albinism in Astyanax fish was sequenced. Results support that the Refugio and Pachón aquatic communities, which are only 4.5 km away apart, are closely related. Thus, the Refugio Cave population may contribute to better understand the evolutionary history of such an important population and, perhaps, help with Pachon’s cavefish conservation.
Subject
Soil Science,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics,Animal Science and Zoology,Nature and Landscape Conservation
Reference17 articles.
1. Gene flow and population structure in the Mexican blind cavefish complex (Astyanax mexicanus)
2. Astyanax Transgenesis and Husbandry: How Cavefish Enters the Laboratory
3. The Astyanax caves of Mexico: Cavefishes of Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosi, and Guerrero.;Elliott;AMCS Bulletin,2018
4. A contemporary analysis of a loss-of-function of the oculocutaneous albinism type II (Oca2) allele within the Micos Astyanax cave fish population.;Espinasa;Speleobiology Notes,2014
5. Hydrogeology of Caves in the Sierra de El Abra Region