International Journal of Marine Science, 2025, Vol.15, No.2, 53-64 http://www.aquapublisher.com/index.php/ijms 54 2 Phylogenetic and Taxonomic Overview 2.1 Evolutionary history and taxonomic overview of groupers Groupers live in coral reefs. They are diverse and have a long and complex taxonomic history. Molecular phylogenetic studies have revealed the relationships of groupers, indicating that they originated in the eastern Atlantic Ocean in the Middle Eocene and later gradually differentiated into six major lineages. Due to different geographical locations and times, each lineage has different evolutionary characteristics. These lineages appeared between the late Oligocene and the middle Miocene, and their differentiation speed was affected by biological and geographical factors (Ma et al., 2016). Based on the taxonomic revision of molecular data, we can know that there are 9 to 11 monophyletic genera in the family Epinephelus coioides, which corrects previous classification errors (Craig and Hastings, 2007; Ma et al., 2018). 2.2 Key genera and species: Epinephelus coioides, Mycteroperca, etc. The most numerous and important genera in the family Epinephelus coioides are Epinephelus coioides, Mycteroperca, Cephalophoris, Plectropomus, and Variola (Craig and Hastings, 2007; Ayu et al., 2024). Among them, Epinephelus coioides has the most species, including more than 90 species, and these different fish species are distributed in tropical and subtropical waters around the world (Loh et al., 2024). Among the other genera, Mycteroperca and Plectropomus are more widely distributed and also occupy an important position in ecology. Studies in recent years have found that some genera (such as Cephalophoris and Epinephelus coioides) are not strictly monophyletic groups. For example, Anyperodon and Cromileptes were once classified in the genus Epinephelus coioides, while some species originally belonging to the genus Epinephelus coioides are now classified in the genus Mycteroperca (Figure 1) (Craig and Hastings, 2007; Amorim et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2022). Figure 1 Collection sites of Epinephelus coioides itajara, Epinephelus coioides adscensionis, Rypticus saponaceus, and Cephalopholis fulva species, all from the Atlantic Ocean, and of Cephalopholis formosa, Epinephelus coioides coeruleopunctatus, Epinephelus coioides erythrurus, and Epinephelus coioides sexfasciatus species, all from the Indian Ocean (Adopted from Amorim et al., 2021) 2.3 Timeline of diversification events (fossil and molecular evidence) Through molecular phylogenetic studies, we know that groupers originated in the Middle Eocene, and their differentiation events mainly occurred between the Late Oligocene and the Middle Miocene. As a result of these differentiations, six major evolutionary branches appeared in groupers, all of which were associated with specific biogeographic regions and differentiation patterns. Through fossil and molecular evidence, it can also be found that replacement events such as ocean basin separation and regional radiation played an important role in the formation of grouper diversity (Ma et al., 2016).
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