Population and genetic study of Green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) in the northern Persian Gulf and Oman Sea, Iran

As the only remnants of diverse and wide spread marine turtles from ancient time, modern marine turtles play important ecological, economical and cultural roles in our oceans and related human communities. Green sea turtle, Chelonia mydas, referred as the most valuable reptile of the world, and have its popularity and famousness owing the name of the order Chelonian and one of the remaining sea turtle families, Cheloniidae. Totally 139 turtles in different life stages, from different sites and using the mentioned methods, captures and the collected data analyzed. Of all samples, the smallest and largest ones had a juvenile 26 cm and a male mature 96 cm length, respectively, the minimum and maximum weight also were 2.3 and 97 kg respectively. Considering the quality, totally 70 sequences with 694 bps were included in the final genetic analyses. Based on the phylogenetic trees, two main clades with 37 and 33 individuals were detected. In both clades, individuals from all sampling sites were present, indicating geographic distinction, convincing to suppose the all individuals as a one group. Total FST for two clades calculated 0.77 (p>0.05) which indicates high level of differentiation. As a whole population or as one group, 17 haplotypes were recognized with haplotype diversity (h) of 0.8977 and nucleotide diversity (π) of 0.0149. 13 haplotypes recorded as the new detected ones. Of all the 17 haplotypes, only four haplotypes have already been reported, sharing with six haplotypes including: two from Australia (KJ502589.1 and KJ502588.1), two haplotypes from Saudi Arabia (KP027611.1, KP027608.1), and one from Indonesia (KM357652.1) and one from south East Asia (KX057743.1). Haplotypes of 1 and 9 with 14 individuals had the highest frequency. Haplotype network was drawn to represent the relationship between the all haplotypes of data set which the results and contribution of each locality in the groups. The network shows that the haplotypes form two main groups have 16 mutation steps which indicate their genetic distance and divergence.