Investigations of population structuring in wild species are fundamental to complete
the bigger picture defining their ecological and biological roles in the marine realm, to estimate
their recovery capacity triggered by human disturbance and implement more efficient management
strategies for fishery resources. The Blackspot Seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo, Brünnich 1768) is a
commercially valuable deep-water fish highly exploited over past decades. Considering its exploitation
status, deepening the knowledge of intraspecific variability, genetic diversity, and differentiation using
high-performingmolecularmarkers is considered an important step for amore effective stock assessment
and fishery management. With one of the largest efforts conceived of and completed by countries overlooking the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts in recent years, a total of 320 individuals were
collected fromdifferent fishing grounds in theMediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean and analysed using
29 microsatellite loci. We applied multiple statistical approaches to investigate the species’ connectivity
and population structure across most of its described distribution area. Considering the incomplete
knowledge regarding the migratory behaviour of adults, here we suggest the importance of egg and
larval dispersal in sustaining the observed genetic connectivity on such a large geographical scale.
