Mitochondrial DNA phylogeny of the spinlobster genus Palinurus (Decapoda: Palinuridae)

In the Mediterranean sea, the high commercial value of lobsters has an important economical impact. Palinurus elephas and Palinurus mauritanicus are distributed in the Western Mediterranean sea and in the North-Eastern Atlantic Ocean. Overfishing is one of the principal causes of spiny lobsters rarefaction. Palinurus species have decreased in many sectors of the Mediterranean sea and most productive fisheries occurred around islands. For this reason many countries have made up a program on the stock preservation. We report results of phylogenetic analyses based on nucleotide sequence data from two regions of the mitochondrial genome, the large-subunit ribosomal RNA (16S) and the cytochrome oxidase I subunit (COI) in Panulirus elephas and Panulirus mauritanicus. In this studie we also included sequences of these gene regions for 28 taxa within the genus Panulirus and Jasus. All the methods used in this study (Neighbor-joinig, Network Median joining) support the phylogenetic position of Palinurus between Panulirus and Jasus.