水産養殖研究開発ジャーナル

概要

Phylogenetic Analysis of the Three Color Variations of the Sea Cucumber Apostichopus japonicus

Jihoon Jo ,Chunsik Park ,Munhwan Kim ,Chungoo Park *

The economic value of Apostichopus japonicus products is primarily determined by their dorsal/ventral color variation (red, green, or black), yet the taxonomic relationships between these color variants are not clearly understood. By performing numerous phylogenetic analyses of the Stichopodidae family, based on nucleotide sequence comparisons of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) and 16S rRNA gene sequences, we observed that these three color variants exhibit very low levels of sequence divergence and are not monophyletic. In this paper, we propose that the different dorsal/ventral color types of A. japonicus belong to a single species.