Frontiers in Marine Science: The first to reveal the diversity and geographical distribution of the world's pomfret species

Recently, the fish classification and phylogeny research team of the Institute of Oceanography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made new progress
in the study of the classification and geographical distribution pattern of fish in the world pomfret (Pampus) of the world pomfret family.
Based on molecular systematics and species definition methods, the study comprehensively analyzed the global pomfret mitochondrial sequence and distribution data, revealing the diversity and geographical distribution pattern of the world's pomfret species for the first time, and the relevant results were published in Frontiers in Marine Science
, a regional journal of the JCR.

Pomfret is widely distributed in tropical and temperate waters of the Indo-West Pacific, is an important marine fishery resources and economic fish in the world and China, China is a major fishing and utilization country of Pomfret fishery resources, its annual catch volume and foreign trade import and export volume account for about 75% and 80%
of the global total respectively.
However, due to the extremely similar external morphology of Pomfret species, the lack of important morphological identification characteristics for species differentiation, and the loss of individual species type specimens, the classification, geographical distribution and phylogenetic relationship of Pomfret species established according to traditional morphological methods have long been controversial
.
Therefore, revealing the diversity composition and geographical distribution pattern of Pomfret species formation and evolution has important research value
for the rational development and sustainable utilization of pomfret fishery resources in the future world and in China.

The research team of fish taxonomy and phylogeny of the Institute of Oceanography has been working on the taxonomy and phylogeny of pomfret for many years, and has published two new species of pomfret fish, Pampus minor and Pampus Liu.
liuorum, redesignated the silver pomfret P.
Argenteus and Pomfret New specimen from Cinereus and raises the idea that Pomfret may have higher species diversity in the
Indo-West Pacific.

On the basis of previous research, based on molecular systematics and species definition methods, the mitochondrial sequences of 1497 pomfret species in the world were integrated, and the global pomfret mitochondrial sequence dataset was established, and the classification and geographical distribution of pomfret species in the Indo-West Pacific Sea were systematically analyzed, which revealed the diversity and geographical distribution pattern of the world's pomfret fish species for the first time, and clarified the seven effective species of the world's pomfret species, namely: silver pomfret and Chinese pomfret P.
chinensis, gray pomfrets, pomfret liu, pomfret chinensis, pomfret p.
chinensis, pomfret pomfret Punctatissimus and Pomfret P.
Candidus (Figure 1).

The results of the study suggest that the p.
fretano reported in the literature in the past Echinogaster should be a synonym
of the silver pomfrey.

The results also showed that the center of species diversity of Pomfret in the central Indo-West Pacific, including the Sunda shelf and the surrounding waters of the South China Sea, except for the prime pomfret which is only limited to the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean, the remaining six species are cross-distributed
in this area.
Differentiation time and biogeographic reconstruction results indicate that pomfret fish originated in the central Indo-West Pacific during the Late Miocene (about 8.
35–11.
33 million years ago), similar to the formation of biodiversity centers in the Indo-Pacific Junction Area, and it is speculated that the origin of Pomfret may be related to the formation of biodiversity centers in the Indo-Pacific Junction (Figure 2).

Wei Jiehong, a doctoral student at the Institute of Oceanography, is the first author of the paper, and Professor Liu Jing and Professor Xu Kuidong are the corresponding authors
of the paper.
The research was supported
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Class B Strategic Leading Science and Technology Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Figure 1.
There are seven valid species of the world pomfret genus based on COI and Cytb sequence species, and the A-G are silver pomfrey, vegetarian pomfret, Chinese pomfre, gray pomfrey, Liu's pomfre, Zhen pomfret and pomfret in order

Figure 2.
Geographical distribution pattern and differentiation time and biogeographic reconstruction of seven pomfret species (bottom)