Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

Butterflyfishes are known for having high species diversity among reef fishes. Since butterflyfishes are very sensitive to even small changes of marine environment, they have ecologically important position and considered as ‘biological indicator’ species. According to increase or decrease of their ...

Butterflyfishes are known for having high species diversity among reef fishes. Since butterflyfishes are very sensitive to even small changes of marine environment, they have ecologically important position and considered as ‘biological indicator’ species. According to increase or decrease of their species diversity and population, butterflyfishes are recognized as important taxa that can be detected changes in the surrounding marine environment. There are 134 species of Chaetodontidae in worldwide, most of them are in genus Chaetodon. Blum (1988) divides genus Chaetodon into 10 subgenus based on osteological and anatomical morphology characters. 14 species of butterflyfishes are reported from Korea, of which 8 species belong to the genus Chaetodon. They are classified into three subgenus according morphological character, but a lack of molecular phylogenetic studies to support, mainly targeting the butterflyfishes from Korea. In this study, mtDNA COI, 16S rRNA sequences and nDNA Tmo-4C4 sequences are analyzed for performing to molecular phylogenetic and taxonomic studies, using the directly collected and loaned specimens of butterflyfishes. As a result, BI and ML tree show monophyletic group in each genus. In genus Chaetodon, subgenus Rabdophorus showing that monophyletic group, others indicate each clade that represent monophyletic group in nDNA region. In addition, this study presented detailed morphological characteristics and comparative of adult and juvenile for 13 species from Korea. Therefore, our purpose is to support phylogeny based on morphological characters, showing monophyly of Chaetodontidae. Finally, we provide species identification key of juveniles with ambiguous classification characteristic based on actual specimen information and basic taxonomic information for accurate species identification.