Phylogeography, Speciation, and Molecular Evolution in Freshwater Aquatic Fauna

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Aquatic Animals".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2026 | Viewed by 87

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Fishery Biology, Faculty of Fisheries, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand
Interests: aquatic biodiversity; phylogeography; molecular phylogenetics and evolution; phycology; cryptic diversity; speciation; population genetic; marine genomics

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Guest Editor
School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia
Interests: species diversity evolution taxonomy biodiversity ecology and evolution systematics conservation ecology genetics conservation biology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Freshwater ecosystems represent important centers of biodiversity and provide excellent models for investigating evolutionary processes. This Special Issue examines phylogeographic patterns, speciation processes, and molecular evolution in freshwater aquatic fauna. We seek contributions that investigate how geographical isolation, habitat heterogeneity, and environmental variation have influenced genetic diversity and the evolutionary history of freshwater organisms.

Topics of interest include comparative phylogeography among freshwater taxa, identification and characterization of cryptic species, evolutionary diversification in isolated aquatic systems, population genetic structure of endemic fauna, and impacts of quaternary climate changes on species distributions and divergence. We encourage studies utilizing various molecular techniques, ranging from DNA barcoding and phylogenetic reconstruction to population genomic and phylogenomic approaches based on high-throughput sequencing.

This Special Issue seeks to enhance our knowledge of freshwater biodiversity evolution and provide scientific foundations for conservation planning. We welcome research on diverse taxonomic groups, including fishes, crustaceans, mollusks, aquatic insects, and other invertebrates, from freshwater environments globally. Both empirical research and methodological contributions that advance freshwater evolutionary biology are encouraged.

Dr. Narongrit Muangmai
Dr. Sebastien Bernard Francis Lavoué
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • biogeography
  • freshwater biodiversity
  • population genomics
  • molecular systematics
  • cryptic spe-cies

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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