Speciation pattern of Telestes souffia complex (Teleostei,Cyprinidae) in Europe using morphological and molecularmarkers

It is notorious that many species boundaries are erroneously defined. When molecular markers are used, misleading evidence can notably be due to the characteristics inherent to mitochondrial DNA and quantity of markers used but also because of a limited range distribution sampling. European cyprinids biodiversity inventory is still an ongoing task and surprising phylogeographic patterns and phylogenetic relationships are still recovered on account of methodological evolution. This is particularly obvious for the Telestes souffia complex. This species occurs in a fragmented range and species boundaries is greatly debated. In this study, we provide an updated delimitation of the different evolutionary entities constituting thisT. souffia complex and propose a taxonomic revision. Morphological and molecular analyses were carried out on 520 specimens coming from 19 localities representing the complete geographical range of this species complex and six related sister species that could potentially interact with it (outgroup ‘sensu lato’). Phylogenetic reconstructions and multivariate analyses demonstrated that the T. souffia complex is constituted of at least three species (T. souffia, Telestes muticellus and Telestes montenigrinus). Data also suggested that T. souffia comprises three subspecies (T. s. souffia, T. s. agassii;T. s. rysela).Wealso confirm the splitting of theT. souffia sister species Telestes pleurobipunctatus into two distinct species. The Peloponnesian lineage will be referred as Telestes alfiensis and the continental lineage as T. pleurobipunctatus. Morphological and molecular markers displayed some degree of incongruence within T. souffia suggesting that introgressive hybridization has played a role in the evolution of the Telestes genus. However, discordance among data sets could also result from heterogeneous rate of morphological evolution. Finally, we demonstrated that T. muticellus was implicated in two categories of hybridization: an inter-species hybridization (betweenT. muticellus and T. souffia) and an inter-generic hybridization (between T. muticellus and Squalius lucumonis), a phenomenon rarely observed for a same species.