Genetic diversity of Korean crayfish, Cambaroides similis (Cambaridae, Decapoda) inferred from analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences

초록

Freshwater crayfish are well suited for the study of conservation biology of freshwater systems because they often act as indicator species for stream habitat quality. As Korean crayfishes, Cambaroides similis have suffered from range reductions and habitat degradation caused by environmental changes and water pollution, this species is considered to be in need of conservation efforts. Information about phylogenetic and genetic diversity of C. similis may be important for evaluating the status of this endangered crayfish. In this study, we explored the genetic diversity of Korean crayfish by mitochondrial 16S rDNA sequence comparison including those of all the species of genus Cambaroides. The pairwise distances among Korean local crayfishes showed 0.0-7.2% differences. C. similis are divided into three distinct groups with high bootstrap values (85 to 100) in NJ and MP phylogenetic analyses: the West sea island, the Western Inland, and the Eastern and Southern Inland clades. Although these molecular data were well concordant with the morphological study of Kim (1977), the status of the species, however, are still unclear whether it is a single species with geographically different strains, or a species complex with three sister species.