Phylogenetic relationship and molecular identification of five Indian Mahseer species using COI sequences

Abstract

This study examined the phylogenetic relationship and identification of five Mahseer species (Torputitora, Tor tor, Tor khudree , Tor chelynoides and Neolissochilus hexagonolopis) using partialsequencing of a Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI) DNA barcodes. The sequence analysis data showed that134 (21.61%) sites out of 628 sites were variable without insertion or deletion. Rate of transition(70.5%) were higher than transversion (29.41%). There was a high inter¬species divergence (range4.1% to 12.2%) in Mahseer species as compared to intra¬specific sequence divergence (1.7% for T.putitora, 1.2% for T. tor, 1.4% for T. khudree, 3.0% for T. chelynoides, 0.26 % for N. hexagonolopis). Thephylogenetic tree, constructed by maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and unweighted pairgroup average methods revealed similar results suggesting that T. putitora, T. tor and T. khudreehad a close relationship to each other while maximum divergence was observed in T. chelynoides,which was also confirmed by the genetic distance data. The results indicate that COI sequencing orbar¬coding is useful in unravelling phylogenetic relationship and identification of Mahseer species.