Spreading of the Chinese pond mussel, Sinanodonta woodiana, across Wallacea: One or more lineages invade tropical islands and Europe

• Two species-level cryptic lineages of Sinanodonta woodiana expanding their ranges as invaders.
• A S. woodiana population from Lesser Sundas belongs to the Malaysian mtDNA lineage.
• Molecular identification of S. woodiana using the BOLD IDS and Genbank is doubtful.

Here we report the first molecular data on an invasive Sinanodonta woodiana ( Lea, 1834) (Bivalvia: Unionidae) population from Lesser Sundas (Flores Island, Indonesia). The DNA barcoding reveals that this population belongs to a mitochondrial lineage that is widely distributed across Malaysia. The mean COI p-distance between this ‘tropical’ lineage and invasive European populations is 5.3 ± 1.0% which clearly corresponds to the interspecific difference. The representatives of such a ‘tropical’ lineage have likely invaded other Indonesian islands together with the introduction of their host fish species, because our sequenced specimens were taken from a population on the southeastern edge of the current Sinanodonta distribution. The molecular identification of invasive populations of the Chinese pond mussels using available online databases such as the BOLD IDS and NCBI's Genbank is doubtful, because there are at least seven distinct mitochondrial lineages, hence each of them could belong to a separate cryptic taxon.

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