The taxonomy of Coilia has been extensively studied in China,and yet phylogenetic relationships among component taxa remain controversial.We used a PCR-based fingerprinting technique,amplified fragment length polymorphism(AFLP) to characterize and identify all four species of Coilia in China.We examined the genetic relationships of the four species of Coilia and a subspecies of Coilia nasus with AFLP.A total of 180 AFLP loci were generated from six primer combinations,of which 76.11% were polymorphic.The mean genetic distance between pairs of taxa ranged from 0.047 to 0.596.The neighbor-joining tree and UPGMA dendrogram resolved the investigated species into three separate lineages:(1) C.mystus,(2) C.grayii and(3) C.brachygnathus,C.nasus,and C.nasus taihuensis.Phylogenetic analysis of the AFLP data is inconsistent with current morphological taxonomic systems.The AFLP data indicated a close relationship among C.brachygnathus,C.nasus taihuensis,and C.nasus.Therefore,the two species described under Coilia(C.brachygnathus and C.nasus taihuensis) are treated as synonyms of C.nasus.
