A DNA barcode reference library of Neuroptera (Insecta, Neuropterida) from Beijing

Abstract

Neuroptera (lacewings) is one of the ancient holometabolous insect groups, but some extant species stand as important natural enemies for biological control. As the capital city of China, Beijing has a rich fauna of Neuroptera, previously with 47 species recorded and sorted in 32 genera of seven families. In this study, DNA barcoding based on sequences of COI gene fragments is used to discriminate lacewing species from Beijing. 217 DNA barcode sequences belonging to 49 species were successfully obtained. The COI barcode data worked well for identification of almost all lacewing species herein examined except Pseudomalladaprasinus (Burmeister), in which cryptic species may exist. Twenty species of Neuroptera are newly recorded from Beijing. Besides, Nothochrysinae is first recorded from Beijing. Chrysopidiaciliata (Wesmael) and Drepanepteryxalgida (Erichson) are first recorded from China.

The complete mitochondrial genome ofMicromus angulatus(Stephens, 1836) (Neuroptera: Hemerobiidae)

“…Phylogenetic trees present that two Micromus mitochondrial genomes (Microminae) are distinct to the other two genomes in Drepanepteryginae (Figure 1). In addition, Ditaxis biseriate (Mantispidae) is clustered with Hemerobiidae except maximum likelihood tree, partially disagreeing with previous phylogenetic studies (Asp€ oeck et al 2012;Zhao et al 2016;Yi et al 2018; Figure 1).…”

Elevational Diversity Patterns of Green Lacewings (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae) Uncovered With DNA Barcoding in a Biodiversity Hotspot of Southwest China

“…The green lacewings (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae), a group of important predatory biocontrol agents with a positive role in the management of aphids, coccids, thrips, whiteflies, and mites in the ecosystem (Alford, 2019;Lai and Liu, 2020), had rarely been investigated. The previous studies on the diversity of green lacewings mainly focused on the species richness and/or Shannon-Wiener diversity index in agro-ecosystem (Deutsch et al, 2005;Thierry et al, 2005;Martins et al, 2019) or forest ecosystem (Yi et al, 2018), but rarely investigated on the pattern of β-diversity. For example, Bozdogan (2020) preliminarily explored the richness patterns of a green lacewing community along the elevational gradients from the East Mediterranean but did not document the β-diversity of green lacewing community along the elevational gradients and correlated temperature variation up to now.…”

DNA Barcoding of Portuguese Lacewings (Neuroptera) and Snakeflies (Raphidioptera) (Insecta, Neuropterida)

“…The intraspecific genetic diversity in Dilar meridionalis was 3.67% (N = 4), while the genetic distance between the D. meridionalis and D. saldubensis was 17.7%. Since previous works on DNA barcoding of Neuroptera have poorly (Yi et al 2018) or not represented (Morinière et al 2014) the family at all, further sampling and sequencing would be needed to access the validity of DNA barcoding based on the COI gene for identification of species in this family.…”

“…For insects, the typical DNA barcode consists of a 658 bp sequence of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) (Folmer et al 1994), also known as the "Folmer region". DNA barcoding has been used in studies involving Neuropterida, namely in the construction and analysis of DNA barcode databases for the fauna of certain regions, including Central Europe (Morinière et al 2014) and Beijing, China (Yi et al 2018), in the description of new species (Pantaleoni and Badano 2012;Badano et al 2016), and to resolve taxonomic questions (Price et al 2015). It is important to accurately identify species, especially the ones with agricultural applications, such as those in Chrysopidae and Hemerobiidae, as misidentifications may compromise bio-logical control.…”