Population genetics of cold‐water coral associated Pleustidae (Crustacea,Amphipoda) reveals cryptic diversity and recent expansion off Iceland

Amphipoda are a diverse and important faunal component of deep‐sea habitats worldwide. However, relatively little is known about species that are associated with cold‐water corals, in particular concerning their genetic diversity, population genetic processes, population differentiation, and potential host specificity. We exemplarily investigate these questions studying three pleustid species—Stenopleustes aff. malmgreni (Boeck, 1871), Stenopleustes aff. nodifera (Sars, 1883) and Neopleustes aff. boecki (Hansen, 1888)—that are associated with cold‐water corals and polychaete assemblages along the Reykjanes Ridge southwest of Iceland. We sequenced mitochondrial COI and performed ddRAD to study thousands of nuclear loci. These species and a pair of morphologically cryptic species within Stenopleustes aff. nodifera were consistently delimited by COI and ddRAD. We conclude that all of our studied species are new to science, raising the number of pleustids reported from cold‐water corals to six. Two species were collected only once, and these species exhibited high levels of inbreeding, suggesting little exchange with other populations, which might be a result of strong host specificity. The other two species were wider distributed, with very low differentiation among populations, even between populations separated by 130 km. These species showed signs of recent population expansions, possibly in relation to changes in the cold‐water coral associated ecosystem (e.g., due to glacial cycles and/or volcanic or geothermal activities). They had lower levels of inbreeding and were each associated with three different host coral species, which might facilitate dispersal and gene flow. Our results show divergent population genetic patterns for the studied pleustid species. These might be attributed to the species’ host specificity and highlight important differences among species with seemingly similar life‐styles. Species diversities appear to be greatly underestimated, limiting our abilities to truly assess the vulnerability of the fauna living in these threatened cold‐water coral habitats.