Molecular Phylogenetic Taxonomy of Some Parrotfish Species (Perciformes, Scaridae) From the Red Sea Using -Actin Gene

a--actin gene (ACTA 1) was studied as a potential phylogenetic marker for selected members of Subfamily Scarinea (Scaridae, Perciformes). The samples collected from the Red Sea. The nucleotide sequences of six parrotfish (Scarus niger, Scarus fuscopurpureus, Scarus ferrugineus, Scarus psittacus, Chlorurus gibbus and Hipposcarus harid)were analyzed with respect to their molecular evolution and phylogenetic relationships among themselves and other related percoid species depending on available sequence data. a-skeletal muscle actin gene segments isolated from the skeletal muscle of the six species that were sequenced and recorded in gene bank with the Accession number for the first time. The six-nucleotide sequences compared to fourteen other percoid sequences from Gene Bank/NCBI, altogether comprising 20 percoid sequences and 3 outgroup sequences (Order Scoraeniformes). The scores of p-distance and sequence divergence of the alpha-skeletal muscle actin gene among the tested species were calculated. Studied A+T of the six sequence rates were variant between 44.4 and 52.4 % for all species. The phylogenetic trees for 23 species (6 parrotfish and 14 sequences of other percoid families from GeneBank together with 3 fishes as outgroup) were developed using actin gene and 5 different analytical approaches: Neighbour Joining (NJ), Minimum Evolution (ME), Maximum Parsimony (MP), Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian Inference method (BI). The analysis revealed a monophyletic origin for the five tested species of the scarinea, which was the principal subfamily investigated (87, 92, 100, 88 and 100% support in our NJ, ME, MP, ML and BI analyses, respectively). While the sixth species Scarus fuscopurpureus of the tested fishes formed a complete separate clade that indicates this species more related to genus labrus than genus scarus .The phylogenetic implications of actin gene or other phylogenetic markers in the family Scaridae or even all families of Order Perciformes until now were shortly discussed.