Phylogeography of an asexual marine clam complex, Lasaea, in the northeastern Pacific based on cytochrome oxidase III sequence variation.

Northeastern Pacific populations of the intertidal marine clam Lasaea are exclusively composed of polyploid asexual clones that lack pelagic larval development. We investigated the phylogeographic structure of this clonal assemblage by assaying genetic divergence in 4 populations along 2000 km of the west coast of North America. In each population a 462-nt portion of the mitochondrial Cytochrome Oxidase III gene was amplified and sequenced for 30 individuals. A total of 21 haplotypes were detected and phylogenetic analyses resolved this variation into 5 main branches that differ in sequence composition by 8.9-14.5%. Two of the branches each encompass a single haplotype, the other 3 terminate in clades containing 3-11 lineages and within clade divergence ranges from 0.4 to 2.3%. Obvious geographic structuring was evident in that 19 of the 21 lineages were restricted in their distributions to single populations and 3 of the main phylogenetic branches were limited to specific marine biogeographic provinces. Two of the clades were encountered in multiple, geographically distant populations; however, the absence of shared haplotypes indicates that long distance gene flow is rare among these direct-developing populations. Northeastern Pacific Lasaea clones form a robust monophyletic grouping relative to other studied populations of the cosmopolitan genus. We estimate divergence times among northeastern Pacific clones to range from 3 to 6 myr. If the latest common ancestor of these exclusively asexual, genetically diverse, regionally monophyletic Lasaea lineages was also asexual, this represents a minimal age estimate for asexuality in the genus. The most plausible alternate hypothesis requires that at least 5 northeastern Pacific sexual parental species have recently become extinct.