Morphological Variation and Partial Mitochondrial Sequence Analysis of Echinoid Species from the Coasts of the East Sea

Morphological classification of echinoid species has many difficulties because of their phenotypic variations. In the present study, we analyzed morphotypes and partial mitochondrial 12S rDNA sequences of four sea urchin species classified as Pseudocentrotus depressus, Anthocidaris crassispina, Hemicentrotus pulcherrimus and Strongylocentrotus nudus, and unidentified four species collected from the coasts of the East sea. Their genomic DNAs were extracted from gonads and mitochondrial 12S rDNA sequences were amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. The sequence identities among the known four sea urchin species were 87.4-95.6%. The sequence identities among the unidentified four species were 99.4-99.6% and showed the highest homology to S. intermedius(99.8%). Thus, our phylogenetic tree indicates that the unidentified four species belong to S. intermedius.