Biochemical-genetic comparison of Cobitis simplicispina from Turkey, and C. taenia, C. albicoloris and C. elongata from Bulgarian freshwaters.

Taxonomic investigations of 4 species of the genus Cobitis: C. simplicispina Hanko 1925, C. taenia Linnaeus 1758, C. albicoloris Chichkoff, 1932 (= C. peshevi Sivkov & Dobrovolov, 1984) and C. elongata (Heckel & Kner 1858) from Turkey and Bulgarian freshwaters were carried out using biochemical-genetic methods. The analyses of one general muscle protein (PROT) and six enzyme systems including esterase (EST), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), malic enzyme (MEP), malate dehydrogenase (MDH) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) revealed electrophoretic differences between the species examined. Fractions controlled by the LDH-B locus of C. simplicispina gave completely different electrophoretic mobility from those of the other Cobitis species. Nei's genetic distance (D(Nei)) between C. simplicispina and C. albicoloris, C. taenia and C. elongata was estimated as 1.39, 1.16 and 1.27, respectively. C. simplicispina might have diverged from the other three species 5.8 - 6.95 million years ago.