The Indo-West Pacific is characterized by extraordinary marine species diversity. The evolutionary mechanisms responsible for generating this diversity remain puzzling, but are often linked to Pleistocene sea level fluctuations. The impact of these sea level changes on the population genetic architecture of the estuarine fish Lates calcarifer are investigated via a natural experiment in a region of the Indo-West Pacific known to have undergone considerable change during the Pleistocene. L. calcarifer, a coastline-restricted catadromous teleost, provides an excellent model for studying the effects of sea level change as its habitat requirements potentially make it sensitive to the region's physical history. Evidence was found for a large phylogenetic break (4% mtDNA control region; 0.47% ATPase 6 and 8) either side of the Torres Strait, which separates the Western Pacifc and Indian Oceans, although some mixing of the clades was evident. This suggests clinal secondary introgression of the clades via contemporary gene flow. Further, populations on Australia's east coast appear to have passed through a bottleneck. This was linked to the historical drying of the Great Barrier Reef coastal lagoon, which resulted in a significant loss of habitat and forced retreat into isolated refugia. These results suggest that historical eustatic changes have left a significant imprint on the molecular diversity within marine species as well as among those in the Indo-West Pacifc.
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机译：西印度洋的特点是海洋物种异常丰富。造成这种多样性的进化机制仍然令人费解，但通常与更新世海平面波动有关。这些海平面变化对河口鱼类Late calcarifer种群遗传结构的影响是通过印度-西太平洋地区的一个自然实验进行的，该地区已知在更新世期间发生了相当大的变化。 L. calcarifer是一种海岸线受限制的坚硬硬骨鱼类，为研究海平面变化的影响提供了一个极好的模型，因为其栖息地需求可能使其对该地区的自然历史敏感。在托雷斯海峡两岸发现了大的系统发育断裂（4％mtDNA控制区； 0.47％ATPase 6和8）的证据，尽管分离了明显的进化枝，但分隔了西太平洋和印度洋。这表明通过当代基因流，进化枝的进化枝渐渗。此外，澳大利亚东海岸的人口似乎已经经历了瓶颈。这与大堡礁沿海泻湖的历史干旱有关，这导致了栖息地的严重丧失，被迫撤退到孤立的避难所。这些结果表明，历史上的喜剧性变化对海洋物种以及印度洋西部太平洋地区的分子多样性都留下了重要的烙印。
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