Biodiversity Commons^™

An Analysis Of Diversity In Freshwater Mussels (Bivalvia: Unionidae) Of The Cuyahoga And Rocky River Watersheds (Ohio, Usa) Based On The 16s Rrna Gene, Robert A. Krebs, Roxana N. Vlasceanu, Michael J.S. Tevesz

Biological, Geological, and Environmental Faculty Publications

The continued loss of freshwater unionid mussel species in the Great Lakes region, and particularly from Lake Erie, raises the question of how much phylogenetic and genetic variation remain in the watershed. The introduction of molecular markers into population biology offers one reproducible technique for assessing this variation. A fragment of the 16S rRNA gene of mitochondrial DNA has previously been used to infer phylogenetic relationships in the family Unionidae. Therefore, we reanalyzed these published molecular data with the addition of 12 species from the Cuyahoga and Rocky rivers in northeast Ohio. Both rivers drain to Lake Erie. The species …