Despite significant progress in studying the species diversity of European fish, there are still significant gaps in understanding the taxonomic diversity of this best-studied part of the world. As a result of complex morphological and genetic studies, a team of scientists from the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the I.D. Papanin Institute of Inland Water Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and other scientific organizations in Russia have determined the species of the most widespread minnow of the genus Phoxinus in Europe, established its phylogenetic position, morphological features and geographic distribution.
Paradoxically, the most widespread species of minnows in Europe, living from Great Britain to the western part of Western Siberia (upper tributaries of the Ob), did not have a species name and in articles of recent years was designated as Phoxinus sp.” explains one of the authors of the article, B.A. Levin, an employee of the laboratory of ecological monitoring of regions of nuclear power plants and bioindication of the IEE RAS.
As it turned out, there was a suitable name for this species – Phoxinus isetensis (Isetsky, or, as the authors called it, Northern minnow). The minnow was described in the 18th century by Academician I.I. Lepyokhin, who gave a morphological description, but not a name. The Latin binomial name was given a little later by another Academician – I.G. Georgi. Subsequently, Academician L.S. Berg reduced this species to synonyms of the common minnow Phoxinus phoxinus – a species described from the Rhine, Germany. The type locality (from where the northern minnow is described) – the Iset River – belongs to the upper reaches of the Tobol-Irtysh basin near Yekaterinburg. The authors visited these sites, collected morphological and genetic material from this locality, as well as from 17 other localities in the European part of Russia, and established the conspecificity of this species with an unnamed, wide-range species of minnow from Europe. The genetic results allowed us to establish that the species originated in the Volga-Kama basin, from where it penetrated into the tributaries of the Ob basin along the Chusovaya. The Chusovaya River belongs to the Kama-Volga water system, but originates in Siberia, heading west and cutting through the Ural Mountains. The Chusovaya River has long been considered a potential corridor for the exchange of aquatic fauna between Asia and Europe. However, previous studies showed the direction of ichthyofauna dispersal from Asia to Europe, while the present work showed that this river worked in both directions as an exchange corridor. It is characteristic that the northern minnow penetrated very shallowly into the Ob basin and, apparently, recently, as evidenced by its genetic identity with the populations from the Volga-Kama. The northern minnow quickly spread across the northern waters of the Last Glacial Maximum, which apparently indicates that it has adaptations to a cold climate. The phylogenetic tree indicates a high level of divergence of the species Phoxinus isetensis, the sister (closest) species of which is the Colchis minnow Phoxinus colchicus from the Caucasus.
Fig. 4 Phylogenetic tree of minnows of the genus Phoxinus with the northern minnow branch indicated (marked)
The article was published in a first quartile journal - Zoosystematics and Evolution.
The study was supported by the RSF project 24-44-20018.
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