Mitochondrial Phylogeny, Diversification, and Biogeographical History of the Carangids (Actinopterygii: Carangiformes) from the Odisha Coast, Bay of Bengal, India

Recent theoretical and practical advances in phylogenetic species delimitation have made biodiversity studies increasingly robust. In widespread taxa, delimiting species is a thought-provoking task; the carangid species are excellent example since they show high degree of phenotypic plasticity with a widespread distribution throughout the globe. The species of the family Carangidae are highly diverse, commercially important, and widely distributed across the Bay of Bengal. To date, information about genetic diversity, and phylogenetic relationships is not well established in the Bay of Bengal. In this study, we integrate two mitochondrial markers (COI and 16S rRNA) and 25 morphological characteristics to explore the phylogenetic relationships, and biogeographical history of the family Carangidae at the generic level. We collected 15 species among ten genera from the Odisha coast, Bay of Bengal, India. Phylogenetic analyses by both neighbor-joining (NJ) and maximum likelihood (ML) produce high congruence trees defining well-supported clades. Two species delimitation methods were analysed: Assemble Species by Automatic Partitioning (ASAP) and Poisson tree processes (PTP). In addition to phylogenetic analyses and species delimitation, the divergence time was estimated based on RelTime-ML method. Our results suggest that the studied carangids were diversified from the common ancestor in the early Cretaceous period (142 Mya).