Ricerc@Sapienza

Mullets are very common fishes included in the family Mugilidae, (Mugiliformes), which
are characterized by both a remarkably uniform external morphology and internal
anatomy. Recently, within this family, different species complexes were molecularly
identified within Mugil, a genus which is characterized by lineages that sometimes
show very different karyotypes. Here we report the results of cytogenetic and molecular
analyses conducted on Mugil hospes, commonly known as the hospe mullet, from

Recent molecular phylogenetic analyses have shown that the Mugil curema Valenciennes, 1836 species complex includes M. incilis Hancock, 1830, M. thoburni (Jordan & Starks, 1896) and at least four “M. curema” mitochondrial lineages, considered as cryptic species. The cytogenetic data on some representatives of the species complex have shown a high cytogenetic diversity. This research reports the results of cytogenetic and molecular analyses of white mullet collected in Ecuador. The analyzed specimens were molecularly assigned to the Mugil sp.