Cryptic species within the Chydorus sphaericus species complex (Crustacea: Cladocera) revealed by molecular markers and sexual stage morphology

The cosmopolitanism paradigm in the biogeography of freshwater invertebrates is currently being replaced by non-cosmopolitanism or continental endemism. Benthic water fleas (Cladocera) from the family Chydoridae were the first group of freshwater invertebrates for which non-cosmopolitanism and cryptic diversity was substantiated by morphological studies. Yet, little is known about genetic differentiation and evolutionary history of chydorid species complexes. Here we present the first analysis of the genetic versus morphological differentiation in a benthic cladoceran species complex—Chydorus sphaericus s. str. using sequence variation in a nuclear (ribosomal internal transcribed spacer 2, ITS-2) and a mitochondrial (cytochrome c oxidase subunit I, COI) genes in 50 Holarctic localities. We tested for continental endemism and cryptic diversity predicted by previous morphological studies. We found evidence for the presence of at least seven putative regional species in the Holarctic, at least three of them being distributed beyond a single continent. While the molecular and sexual stage characters showed general concordance on species lineages, parthenogenetic female characters lacked resolution or were unassociated with molecular lineages. We conclude that cryptic regional lineages of benthic cladocerans are apparent and that the sexual stages represent the most informative morphological source of species characters for this environmental indicator group.