Recent invasion of the tropical Atlantic by an Indo‐Pacific coral reef fish

Abstract

The last tropical connection between Atlantic and Indian–Pacific habitats closed c . 2 million years ago (Ma), with the onset of cold‐water upwelling off southwestern Africa. Yet comparative morphology indicates more recent connections in several taxa, including reef‐associated gobies (genus Gnatholepis ). Coalescence and phylogenetic analyses of mtDNA cytochrome b sequences demonstrate that Gnatholepis invaded the Atlantic during an interglacial period ∼145 000 years ago ( d = 0.0054), colonizing from the Indian Ocean to the western Atlantic, and subsequently to the central (∼100 000 years ago) and eastern Atlantic (∼30 000 years ago). Census data show a contemporary range expansion in the northeastern Atlantic linked to global warming.

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