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Red algae Pterocladiella capillacea off the coast of China were investigated for genetic diversity. With 176 samples categorized into six populations based on concatenated rbcL and cox1 sequences, the results rang warning bells for the genetic diversity of Pterocladiella capillacea along the Chinese coastline: (1) a good diversity of haplotype (Hd > 0.5) in Naozhou and Hui’an populations situated along the southern coast of China, but highest in the former; (2) less nucleotide diversity in each of the six populations (Pi < 0.005); (3) genetic differentiation occurred between the north population in Changdao and the two southern grown populations in Nan’ao, and Naozhou. To identify molecular markers, an MP phylogenetic tree was used to illustrate genetic profiles in detail, with 161 concatenated sequences clustered into four branches: Changdao (north), Nan’ao (south), Naozhou (south), and the remaining regions (middle). The Fst value for each of Changdao, Nan’ao, and Naozhou was greater than 0.5, which denotes that these three populations are genetically different to those growing in the middle coast. Moreover, a 30-haplotype-based median-joining network corroborated this genetic differentiation, though variations between all the investigated populations were not very high due to the relatively smaller values of genetic distance between the six (Dxy < 0.01). Overall, red algae P. capillacea in Chinese coastal seawater showed a higher haplotype diversity and lower nucleotide diversity. Such a genetic profile indicates that both natural random genetic drift and interference from human activities have possibly affected the distribution of gene frequencies in red algae P. capillacea along the Chinese coastline. |
