Tiffani Crum

Defense Date

7-29-2005

Graduation Date

Summer 2005

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

thesis

Degree Name

MS

Department

Biological Sciences

Committee Chair

Brady A. Porter

Committee Member

Kyle W. Selcer

Committee Member

Michael Jensen-Seaman

Keywords

Cyprinella, hybridization, invasive species, phylogeny

Abstract

The genus Cyprinella is a highly diverse and widely distributed assemblage of freshwater fish. Members of this genus are commonly referred to as minnows and their similar appearances have led to numerous classification problems. Only recently has Cyprinella been elevated to generic status and many relationships within the genus are only beginning to be understood. To investigate the monophyly of Cyprinella leedsi, a species of Cyprinella with a highly disjunct distribution, and to develop a molecular method for tracking hybridization events between the invasive red shiner (C. lutrensis) and other southeastern Cyprinella species, the mtDNA tRNA Pro gene, the control region, and the tRNA Phe gene were sequenced from 10 different Cyprinella species. From the sequence data, maximum parsimony and neighbor joining trees were generated in PAUP. These showed that C. leedsi was in fact not monophyletic. There are three separate populations of C. leedsi with C. callitaenia (a documented sister species) embedded among them. Also from this sequence data, it was determined that other Cyprinella species did not have the large duplications within the control region seen in C. lutrensis and C. spiloptera and documented by Broughton and Gold (2000). Due to the lack of large size variations within the control region, restriction digests of fluorescently labeled PCR products followed by fragment analysis was determined to be a suitable method for a diagnostic identification of the maternal parent of hybrids between C. lutrensis, C. venusta, and the federally threatened species C. caerulea.

Format

PDF

Language

English

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