Phylogeny of the shanny, Lipophrys pholis, from the NE Atlantic using mitochondrial DNA markers.

The distribution of the shanny includes the NE Atlantic from Norway to Mauritania and the Atlantic islands, with some records in the Western Mediterranean. Although several studies have been carried out on the morphology (Arruda, 1979; Bath, 1976; Lowe, 1843), ecology (Faria and Almada, 2001; Almada and Faria, 2000), ontogeny (Faria et al., 2002), and its diet composition (Maze et al., 1999) not much has been done on the genetics (Guillemaud et al., 2000). Some authors have drawn attention to morphological diVerences between Lipophrys pholis of the European continental coasts and the Atlantic islands. One of the Wrst studies to propose subspeciation in L. pholis is Arruda (1979) who identiWes unique features for the Azorean shanny. This observation led Zander (1980) to propose a model of re-colonisation of blennies for the Mediterranean after the Messinian crisis (Hsü et al., 1973). Zander suggests that as the temperature and sea level decreased, those Mediterranean blennies moved towards Atlantic islands. One of these blennies could have been an ancestor of L. trigloides which probably gave rise to an ancestor similar to L. pholis. At the end of the glaciation, this “new” species invaded the African and then the European coasts. Finally, Zander justiWes the disjunct distribution of the shanny by diVerences in competition