Phylogenetic relationships Of the commercial red snapper Lutjanidae sp.) from three marine regions

Unambiguous and precise identifications of a species are crucial for managing and conserving the species across their dispersal regions. This study analyzed the molecular ignatures and phylogenetic relationship of 84 specimens of lutjanids obtained from Malaysia, which covers three marine regions; Straits of Malacca (SM), west South China Sea (west SCS), and east South China Sea (east SCS). The assessmentof 613 bp mtDNA COI has markedly classified the samples into five distinct species namely Lutjanus alabaricus,L.entimaculatus, L. erythtropterus, L. sebae and L. bohar. The intraspecific and interspecificgenetic distance ranged between 0.1%�0.7% and 8.2%� 19.6%, respectively. While genetic homogeneity occurred among population and species across SM and west SCS, significant genetic structuring was detected among species between west and east SCS as evidenced by the occurrence of a single species,L. bohar that can be found only in Sabah (east SCS). The divulged potential loss of gene flow among the regions and was probably caused by ceanic currents. This study detected an ambiguous sequence (from Genbank) probably due to hybridization between species or simply because of an unidentifiednode. This study proposed that COI is the valid and reliable genetic marker for dentifying lutjanids distributedacross Malaysian waters. uture revision in distribution pattern and diversity xploration on alarge scale with a higher number of samples and different genetic markers is needed to fill this current
study’s gaps.