Description of a new deep-water dogfish shark from Hawaii, with comments on the Squalus mitsukurii species complex in the West Pacific

By

Daly-Engel, Toby
Koch, Amber
Anderson, James.
Cotton, Charles F.
Grubbs, Dean

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2018

Original Publication

ZooKeys

Volume

798

Pages

135-157

Subjects

Chondrichthyes , DNA barcoding , Elasmobranchii , Morphology , Squalus hawaiiensis , taxonomy

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.798.28375

 

Abstract

Dogfish sharks of the genusSqualusare small, deep-water sharks with a slow rate of molecular evolution that has led to their designation as a series of species complexes, with low between-species diversity relative to other taxa. The largest of these complexes is named for the Shortspine spurdog (SqualusmitsukuriiJordan & Snyder), a medium-sized dogfish shark common to warm upper slope and seamount habitats, with a putative circumglobal distribution that has come under investigation recently due to geographic variation in morphology and genetic diversity. The Hawaiian population ofSqualusmitsukuriiwas examined using both morphological and molecular analyses, putting this group in an evolutionary context with animals from the type population in Japan and closely-related congeners. External morphology differs significantly between the Hawaiian and JapaneseS.mitsukurii, especially in dorsal fin size and relative interdorsal length, and molecular analysis of 1,311 base pairs of the mitochondrial genes ND2 and COI show significant, species-level divergence on par with other taxonomic studies of this genus. The dogfish shark in Hawaii represents a new species in the genus, and the nameSqualushawaiiensis, the Hawaiian spurdog, is designated after the type location.