With about 210 genera and 2010 species distributed across Eurasia, the East Indian Islands, Africa and North America, Cyprinidae is the largest family of freshwater fish in the world. The endemic clade of East Asian Cyprinidae displays a tremendous diversity of ecological and phenotypic traits, enabling them to exploit river drainages and lakes in this area. Therefore, an explicit molecular phylogeny will provide a valuable framework for future research in genome evolution, adaptation and speciation of these cyprinids. 

Under the supervision of HE Shunping, Professor of Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHB), PhD student TAO Wenjing et al. resolved the formerly intractable adaptive diversification of the endemic clade of East Asian Cyprinidae. 100 nuclear gene segments (71132 base pairs) were used to assemble a super matrix. These genomic-wide data recovered a robust phylogeny for representative species of the endemic East Asian cyprinid fauna using maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference. Relaxed molecular clock analyses indicated species radiations of this clade concentrated at approximately 1.9–7.6 MYA. 

This research provides evidence that the bursts of diversification in this fauna are directly linked to major paleoenvironmental events associated with monsoon evolution occurring from late Miocene to Pliocene. Ancestral state reconstruction reveals convergent morphological characters are hypothesized to be independent products of similar selective pressures in ecosystems. 

This work was supported by grants from the National Major Basic Research Program (973 Program) and national science foundation. The paper was published online in PLoS ONE on October 20, 2010.  

Related link:  

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013508.