Connectivity Among Deep Water Fishes in the Hawaiian Archipelago

Understanding larval connectivity patterns is vital to fisheries management, and population genetic comparisons are an efficient means of obtaining these data. In marine fishes the geographic scale over which larvae disperse can be enormous and often span thousands of km. Some shallow water reef species show population structure on the somewhat smaller scale of island archipelagos. Eight deepwater fishes (Family Lutjanidae and Epinephelidae) support the important bottomfish fishery in Hawaii.  The majority of snappers in this fishery are carnivorous and found in hard bottom habitat at approximately 100-400 meters, from Hawaii to the east coast of Africa.  The only grouper in the fishery is found in similar habitat at shallower depths ( 0-150 m) and is a Hawaiian endemic.  We hypothesis that the broad depth range of the snappers may promote higher connectivity between adjacent habitats, relative to their shallow water counterparts and Hawaiian endemics. Here we present population genetic data for the deepwater snappers Pristipomoides filamentosus, Etelis carbunculus and E. coruscans and the grouper Epinephelus quernus from across the Hawaiian Archipelago. Using microsatellite markers and mitochondrial cytochrome b we surveyed over 3,000 individuals at twenty locations within Hawaii. Here we report differences in population connectivity patterns between these species that are likely due to species level differences such as life history characteristics and larval behavior.