Abstract
Marine reptiles are declining globally, and recent climate change may be a contributing factor. The study of sea snakes collected beyond their typical distribution range provides valuable insight on how climate change affects marine reptile populations. Recently, we collected 12 Laticauda semifasciata (11 females, 1 male) from the waters around southern South Korea - an area located outside its typical distribution range (Japan, China including Taiwan, Philippines and Indonesia). We investigated the genetic origin of Korean specimens by analyzing mitochondrial cytochrome b gene (Cytb) sequences. Six individuals shared haplotypes with a group found in Taiwan-southern Ryukyu Islands, while the remaining six individuals shared haplotypes with a group encompassing the entire Ryukyu Archipelago. These results suggest L. semifasciata moved into Korean waters from the Taiwan-Ryukyu region via the Taiwan Warm Current and/or the Kuroshio Current, with extended survival facilitated by ocean warming. We highlight several contributing factors that increase the chances that L. semifasciata establishes new northern populations beyond the original distribution range.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0179871 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-9 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2017 |
Bibliographical note
We thank the fishermen who donated valuable sea krait samples, Dr. Ming-Chung Tu for his support in collecting samples in Taiwan and Jong-Sun Kim, Il-Kook Park and Sera Kwon for their help during the field surveys.Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Park et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding
Research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2014R1A1A4A01005302). In special, we dedicate this manuscript to Heon-Joo Lee, who passed away in car accident during a field survey on Jeju Island.
