Research Article Mediterranean Marine Science Indexed in WoS (Web of Science, ISI Thomson) and SCOPUS The journal is available on line at http://www.medit-mar-sc.net DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/mms.1020 Genetic differentiation among Parastichopus regalis populations in the Western Mediterranean Sea: potential effects from its fishery and current connectivity C. MAGGI1 and M. GONZÁLEZ-WANGÜEMERT2 1 Dipartimento Scienze della Vita e dell’Ambiente, Universita’ Politecnica delle Marche, 60100 Ancona, Italy 2 Centro de Ciências do Mar (CCMAR), CIMAR-Laboratório Associado, Universidade do Algarve, Gambelas, 8005-139 Faro, Portugal Corresponding author:
[email protected] Handling Editor: Panagiotis Kasapidis Received: 27 July 2014; Accepted: 16 March 2015; Published on line: 7 September 2015. Abstract Parastichopus regalis (Cuvier, 1817) is the most expensive seafood product on the Catalonian market (NE Spain), with prices at approximately 130 €/Kg (fresh weight). Despite its ecological and economic importance, biological and genetic information on this sea cucumber species is scarce. Here, we provide both the first insight on the genetic structure of P. regalis using sequences of cytochrome oxidase I (COI) and 16S genes and a morphological description of its population. Individual sea cucumbers were collected in six locations along the Spanish Mediterranean coast, including an area under fishery pressure (Catalonia). We found high haplotype diversity and low nucleotide diversity for both genes, with higher levels of genetic diversity observed in the COI gene. The population pairwise fixation index (FST), AMOVA and correspondence analysis (CA) based on the COI gene revealed significant genetic differentiation among some locations. However, further analysis using nuclear markers (e.g., microsatellites) is necessary to corroborate these results.