Pattern of genetic variation of yellow catfish Pelteobagrus fulvidraco Richardso in Huaihe river and the Yangtze river revealed using mitochondrial DNA control region sequences.

Genetic variability and population genetic structure of the yellow catfish Pelteobagrus fulvidraco Richardso in the Huaihe river and the Yangtze river was examined with a 810-bp of the mitochondrial DNA control region. A total of 70 haplotypes were identified from 145 samples, which were characterized with high haplotype diversity (h = 0.9832 ± 0.0041) but low nucleotide diversity (π = 0.0415 ± 0.0201). The analysis of molecular variance and phylogenetic reconstructions detected significant geographic structure between Huaihe river and Yangtze with FST = 0.1183 (P = 0.0000). Neighbor-joining (NJ) phylogenetic analyses identified two distinct clades (bootstrap support 99 %). The medium joining network drawn using the complete data set was reticulated and also distinctly split the 70 haplotypes into two groups corresponding to those of the NJ tree. Departures from neutrality were not significant for the Huaihe river and the Yangtze river Pelteobagrus fulvidraco, concordant with the observed multimodal mismatch distributions (P > 0.05), which suggested that the effective size of this species has been large and stable for a long period. The question about the existence of significant genetic differentiation for Pelteobagrus fulvidraco in the Yangtze river and Huaihe river basins remains to be further studied with molecular nuclear markers and larger sample sizes from throughout the river basins.