PRELIMINARY STUDY ON GENETIC DIVERSITY AND POPULATION STRUCTURE OF SCHIZOTHORAX PRENANTI FROM ZHOUGONG RIVER

Zhougong River is one of the birthplaces of Schizothorax prenanti. To explore the genetic characteristics including genetic diversity and population structure of S. prenanti from the Zhougong River, 6 continuous sampling locations were set along the Zhougong River for collecting samples. The mitochondrial control area (D-loop) was used as molecular marker to evaluate the genetic diversity and population structure after extraction of total genomic DNA. The results showed that 32 haplotypes were detected from 63 S. prenanti, the total nucleotide diversity (π) was 0.013 and the total haplotype diversity (h) was 0.966. Compare all sampling points, the highest genetic diversity was detected from the Zhangjiawan population (PopF, π=0.018, h=1.000), while the lowest nucleotide diversity was found from the Luoba population (PopC, π=0.010, h=0.970) and the lowest haplotype diversity was found from the downstream population of Wawushan Dam (PopB, π=0.018, h=0.867). There were 13 shared haplotypes and 19 private haplotype were found in the 6 populations, and the shared haplotypes were mainly distributed in PopD and PopE. Except for populations PopC and PopF (F_st=0.195, P<0.01), populations PopA and PopE (F_st=0.158, P<0.01) have a high genetic differentiation, the level of genetic differentiation among most other S. prenanti populations was medium or low, which indicated relatively close genetic relationship among the S. prenanti populations from Zhougong River. In this research, the relatively high level of genetic diversity and close genetic relationships of S. prenanti populations were detected from different ranges of the Zhougong River, which can provide reference data for the protection of special fishes in the Zhougong River.