Sinanodonta woodiana (Lea, 1834)

Kashiri, Hadise, Wahidi, Abdul Bashir, Dezful, Amin Chelemal, Nezhad & Pourebrahimi, Somayeh, 2024, DNA barcoding revealed the presence of the invasive freshwater mussel Sinanodonta aff. woodiana (Lea, 1834) in Afghanistan, Zoosystema 46 (6), pp. 133-147 : 136-140

Sinanodonta woodiana (Lea, 1834)

( Fig. 2 )

Symphynota woodiana Lea, 1834: 42 , pl. 5, fig. 12.

Sinanodonta woodiana – Graf & Cummings 2007: 305.

COMMON NAME. — Chinese pond mussel.

FIRST RECORD OF THE INVASIVE CHINESE POND MUSSEL

IN AFGHANISTAN

A well-established population of Sinanodonta was detected in Amu Darya River ( ADR) in Afghanistan. No other Unionidae species were found in the sampling site. The Sinanodonta settlement was confined to muddy-sandy substrates. The depth at the sampling area was about 60 cm. At the site with bivalve bed, the water flow was so low and there was a dense covering of macrophytes. The water temperature was 27°C on the sampling day.

MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS

The valves ( SING) pattern (pl) of the specimens were slightly elongated with brown/olive greenish periostracum ( Fig. 2 ). The youngest and oldest specimens were one and eight years old respectively, with a mean age of 4.7 years. Morphometric traits of the specimens collected from the Amu Darya River in Afghanistan are given in Table 2 . All size classes were observed in the collected samples except the large one ( Fig. 2b ). Most of the individuals were placed in small size class (N= 21) while the remaining ones (N = 7) were of medium and very small size ( Table 2 ). The length, width and height of the shell of collected samples varied respectively from 33.82 to 127.40 mm, 8.91 to 43.01 mm, and 23.42 to 71.63 mm. The convexity and elongation indices of the specimens also ranged from 26.34 to 39.11 and from 55.79 to 69.24 mm, respectively.

MOLECULAR DATA

DNA barcoding confirmed the invasion of the freshwater bivalve S. woodiana into Afghanistan. Six 671-bp long fragments of Cytochrome oxidase subunit I were obtained from the S. woodiana individuals and deposited in the NCBI GenBank ( Table 1). BI analysis of COI confirmed the presence of the alien species S. woodiana in Afghanistan. Our specimens

exhibited the same haplotype as previously recorded for non-indigenous individuals in Kazakhstan, Eastern and Western Siberia, European Russia, Myanmar, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Germany and Ukraine (Hap E1). This haplotype was placed in the same clade along with eight other haplotypes from Uzbekistan, Italy and China with strong bootstrap support, applying to be the temperate invasive lineage (Lineage E; Sinanodonta aff. woodiana ) ( Fig. 3 ).

Based on our molecular data, there are at least eight mitochondrial lineages within the Sinanodonta complex ( Fig. 3 ). The mean COI P -distances among the mitochondrial lineages in the Sinanodonta complex are given in Table 3 . The highest mean P -distance was observed among the lineages F and A (13.9%), while the lowest value was observed among the lineages A and B (2.1%). The distance between the lineage E comprising our specimens and other lineages ranged between 4.2 and 12.5%. This value was also 5.7% between the temperate and tropical invasive lineages. The mean distance within the temperate lineage comprising nine unique haplotypes was also 0.3.%.

The median joining network was constructed based on 99 COI sequences of S. aff. woodiana within the temperate invasive lineage (Lineage E) ( Fig. 4 ). Consistent with our phylogenetic data, in the haplotype network, our specimens and those from China (KJ434482, KJ434484 and KJ434485), and non-indigenous individuals from Kazakhstan, Eastern and Western Siberia, European Russia, Myanmar, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Germany (OU070149) and Ukraine were lumped together into a same haplotype. This haplotype also weakly separated from non-indigenous individuals of Uzbekistan and Italy (MF414338) by only one substitution.

Figures

FIG. 2. — Non-indigenous Sinanodonta aff. woodiana (Lea, 1834) in Afghanistan: A, live samples of the mussels settled in the river, Qala-I-Zal (10 August 2020); B, shell exterior view of the mussels: a, b and c represent very small, small and medium size classes, respectively.

FIG. 3. — The Bayesian phylogenetic tree on the basis of 37 unique COI sequences of Sinanodonta sp. and related taxa, including one new sequence from Afghanistan (red) and 36 sequences from GenBank. Margaritifera laosensis (I. Lea, 1863) and M. dahurica (Middendorff, 1850) are the outgroups. The numbers above branches show the bootstrap support value. The scale bar represent the branch lengths.

FIG. 4. — Median joining network for COI sequences of Sinanodonta aff. woodiana (N = 100; Lineage E (Table 1)). The numbers near branches show the number of mutation sites.