A star is torn—molecular analysis divides the Mediterranean population of Poli’s stellate barnacle, Chthamalus stellatus (Cirripedia, Chtamalidae)

Abstract

Poli’s stellate barnacle, Chthamalus stellatus Poli, populates the Mediterranean Sea, the North-Eastern Atlantic coasts, and the offshore Eastern Atlantic islands. Previous studies have found apparent genetic differences between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean populations of C. stellatus, suggesting possible geological and oceanographic explanations for these differences. We have studied the genetic diversity of 14 populations spanning from the Eastern Atlantic to the Eastern Mediterranean, using two nuclear genes sequences revealing a total of 63 polymorphic sites. Both genotype-based, haplotype-based and the novel SNP distribution population-based methods have found that these populations represent a geographic cline along the west to east localities. The differences in SNP distribution among populations further separates a major western cluster into two smaller clusters, the Eastern Atlantic and the Western Mediterranean. It also separates the major eastern cluster into two smaller clusters, the Mid-Mediterranean and Eastern Mediterranean. We suggested here environmental conditions like surface currents, water salinity and temperature as probable factors that have formed the population structure. We demonstrate that C. stellatus is a suitable model organism for studying how geological events and hydrographic conditions shape the fauna in the Mediterranean Sea.