Molecular phylogenetics of albino phenotypes of northern snakehead (Channa argus) from Neijiang City, Sichuan Province, China

Abstract

 The northern snakehead Channa argus is widely distributed and extremely resistant to
hypoxia; which is cultivated in China as an aquaculture species and has heritable albino
body colour populations. Here, two phenotypes of albino C. argus of “gray fin rays” and
“gold fin rays.” were studied. The genetic diversity and molecular phylogenetics of C. argus
with different body colours and geographical distributions were investigated based on
their nuclear ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 sequences. The ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 sequences of the C. argus
were conservative, with 1/1000 of mutation sites and 0.000-0.014 genetic distance, which
showed that the studied phenotypes of C. argus belong to the same species. The intraspecific
variation sites of the studied sequences showed that it was mainly nuclear transformation;
with the sequences from albino C. argus with “gold fin rays” individuals having more variation
sites than “gray fin rays” individuals. The difference in the geographical distributions of
C. argus were distinguished in phylogenetic relationship studies, which supported that
nuclear ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 sequences can be used to study molecular phylogeography

Keywords:
Albino Channa argus, ITS, Mutation sites, Molecular phylogeography