Last Tile Added to a Mosaic: Phylogenetic Placement of Enigmatic Freshwater Fish Leucalburnus Satunini (cypriniformes: L Euciscidae) Uncovered

Subfamily Leuciscinae, the largest freshwater fish group of the western Palearctic region, has been widely studied, including the phylogenetic relationships between its species and genera. However, until now, one genus completely escaped attention in this regard. Even though several works hypothesised about its evolutionary relationships based on its scarce morphological data, they did not succeed in resolving this puzzle, and their assumptions were often contradictory. Our study aimed to bring insight into the phylogenetic origin and relationships of the enigmatic Caucasian genus Leucalburnus based on the most taxon-dense, multilocus molecular analyses of the subfamily Leuciscinae so far. Moreover, a time-calibrated phylogenetic reconstruction was performed in order to put the emergence of the Leucalburnus lineage in a timeframe. In our analyses, Leucalburnus was consistently recovered as a member of the Alburnus clade, which further comprises Alburnus, Leucaspius and Anaecypris, adding thus one more genus to the clade and providing more evidence of non-monophyly of the genus Alburnus.