TY - JOUR AU - BANU, Firudoz AU - RAMANADEVI, Vellaichamy AU - SHALINI, Gunasekar AU - THANGARAJ, Muthusamy PY - 2020/06/29 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Molecular variation and phylogenetic status of ponyfish (Perciformes: Leiognathidae) in Karaikal, South India JF - Notulae Scientia Biologicae JA - Not Sci Biol VL - 12 IS - 2 SE - Research articles DO - 10.15835/nsb12210661 UR - https://www.notulaebiologicae.ro/index.php/nsb/article/view/10661 SP - 251-257 AB - <p style="text-align: justify;">The family Leiognathidae, commonly known as ponyfish and they are mainly classified by mouth morphology. In this study, genetic variation and phylogenetic relationships among nine genera and 13 species of Leiognathidae, inferred from Cytochrome Oxydase I gene. The Neighbour Joining tree showed the paraphyly of the studied species form genus <em>Secutor</em> and monophyly status all the other eight genera. <em>Leiognathus equulus</em> is occupying a basal branch of the family NJ tree. The highest genetic distance (0.349) showed between <em>Eubleekeria</em> and <em>Nuchequula.</em> The lowest genetic distance (0.007) showed between the genus <em>Nuchequula</em> and <em>Leiognathus. </em>Among the nine genera, very less nucleotide diversity (<em>π</em>= 0.1100) was in <em>Secutor</em> and higher value (<em>π</em> = 0.7558) was recorded in <em>Leiognathus.</em> The Tajima’s test statistic (<em>D</em>) value was positive, so, the entire genus is in balancing selection.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p> ER -