Morphology and genetic variation in the endangered tortoise Manouria emys: distinct lineages or plastron anomalies?

2018/01/02 by Shantanu Kundu, Vikas Kumar, Boni Amin Laskar +2 · 1 voice
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · #Ichthyology and Marine Biology #Identification and Quantification in Food #Turtle Biology and Conservation

paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/23802359.2018.1437795

openalex publication_date 2018/01/02 · openalex created_date 2018/03/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Anecdotal reports indicate the allopatric populations of two Manouria emys subspecies differ in colour variation and plastron pattern, intimating that these may constitute separate evolutionary lineages. We examined the studied taxa both morphologically and genetically to determine the described morphological differences correlated with genetic divergence. Based on the plastron pattern, the study detected three morphologically different M. emys having their footmarks in northeast India, bordering international boundaries of Bangladesh and Myanmar. Nevertheless, we found shallow genetic divergence in both mtCOI and mtCytb gene segment among the different M. emys morphospecies. This study concludes that the detected plastron anomalies in M. emys do not suggest their distinct genetic lineages.

Citations

• A molecular phylogeny of tortoises (Testudines: Testudinidae) based on mitochondrial and nuclear genes
• MrBayes 3.2: Efficient Bayesian Phylogenetic Inference and Model Choice Across a Large Model Space

Discussions

• Plastron shape and color suggest three lineages of Forest Tortoise, but Kundu et al 2018 found that mitochondrial lineages are shallow, that is, there is no evidence of deep lineages within the specie [bsky, 13 points, 0 comments]

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