First cytogenetic data on Afrotropical lutefishes (Citharinidae) in the light of karyotype evolution in Characiformes

By

Simanovsky, Sergey
Medvedev, Dmitry A.
Tefera, Fekadu
Golubtsov, Alexander

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2022

Original Publication

Comparative cytogenetics : international journal of plant & animal cytogenetics, karyosystematics and molecular systematics

Volume

16

Series / Issue

Issue: 2

Pages

143--150

Subjects

Africa , Characoidei , Chromosomes , Citharinoidei , Citharinus , karyotype evolution

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

St. Petersburg, Russia [Published] with technical support of Zoological Institute RAS [2007]-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/compcytogen.v16.i2.79133

 

Abstract

The Afrotropical lutefish family Citharinidae (Citharinoidei, Characiformes) comprises three genera with eight species in total. Although Citharinidae have been studied in terms of taxonomy and systematics, no cytogenetic information was available for any representative of the family. Furthermore, only one species out of 116 in Citharinoidei (Distichodus affinis Günther, 1873) has been studied cytogenetically. Here, we report the karyotypes of Citharinus citharus (Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 1809) from West Africa and Citharinus latus Müller et Troschel, 1844 from Northeast Africa. The former has the diploid chromosome number 2n = 40 and the fundamental number FN = 80, while the latter has 2n = 44 and FN = 88. Hence, these karyotypes consist exclusively of bi-armed chromosomes. Such karyotypes were previously found in D. affinis and in many lineages of Neotropical species of another suborder of Characiformes, Characoidei. In contrast, the karyotypes dominated by uni-armed elements are typical for a number of phylogenetically basal lineages of Afrotropical and Neotropical Characoidei. We discuss the importance of our data on Citharinidae for the understanding of the karyotype evolution within the order Characiformes.