High-density SNP panel provides little evidence for population structure in European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) in waters surrounding the UK

Taylor, Martin I., Lamb, Philip D., Coscia, Ilaria, Murray, David S., Brown, Mary, Cameron, Tom C., Davison, Phil I., Freeman, Howard A., Georgiou, Katerina, Grati, Fabio, Haugen, Thrond, Karachle, Paraskevi K., Kennedy, Richard, Lanssens, Thomas, Lincoln, Harriet, Martinho, Filipe, McCarthy, Ian, Petroutsos, Spyros-Iasonas, Pita, Pablo, Pontes, João C. O., Baucells, Marta P., Rangel, Mafalda, Roche, William, Sbragaglia, Valerio, Sturrock, Anna M., Taylor, Michelle L., Wogerbauer, Ciara, Veiga, Pedro, Verver, Sieto, Weltersbach, Marc Simon and Hyder, Kieran (2025) High-density SNP panel provides little evidence for population structure in European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) in waters surrounding the UK. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 82 (5). ISSN 1054-3139

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Abstract

The European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) is a commercially and recreationally important fish widely, distributed across the Northeast Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Two distinct lineages that represent the Atlantic and Mediterranean regions have been previously identified, with a hybrid zone close to the Almeria–Oran front. The presence of fine-scale population structure within the Northeast Atlantic region is less clear. Here, we investigated population structure in adult samples obtained from the northern part of the Atlantic range surrounding the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Norway, along with outgroups from Portugal and the Mediterranean, using a panel of 41 K single nucleotide polymorphism markers. Population structure among Northeast Atlantic Ocean samples was weak in both spawning—(FST = 0.00022) and feeding—(FST = 0.00032) season data sets, with small pairwise FST values between sample pairs. However, average FST was larger between spawning samples than between feeding samples, with a pattern of isolation-by-distance among the spawning samples, but not the feeding samples, suggesting some biologically meaningful population structure. The largest pairwise FST values at both International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) rectangle and division scales involved a sample from the west of Ireland. We found no evidence of a gradient in “Mediterranean” ancestry among samples collected around the UK in our data set or in a reanalysis of a published data set where such a pattern had been previously identified. In summary, there was no evidence that sea bass in different ICES divisions within the Northeast Atlantic Ocean represents genetically separate populations. Further work is required to reconcile evidence from tagging and modelling studies that suggest the potential for demographic independence with the genetic data.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability statement: Data files underpinning the analyses contained in this study have been archived on Zenodo (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.15025594). R Scripts for analyses and plots are available from Github (https://github.com/martiniantaylor/ICES_sea_bass). Funding information: This research was supported by the UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra Grants FRD009 and FRD052) and UKRI [MR/V023578/1]. F. M. was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT) in the scope of Decree-Law 57/2016, CFE-UC by project reference UIDB/04004/2020 and DOI identifier 10.54499/UIDB/04004/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/04004/2020), and Associate Laboratory TERRA by project reference LA/P/0092/2020) and DOI identifier 10.54499/LA/P/0092/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0092/2020)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Collaborative Centre for Sustainable Use of the Seas Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
Related URLs:	https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	19 May 2025 11:30
Last Modified:	19 May 2025 11:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99298
DOI:	10.1093/icesjms/fsaf064

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