Mitochondrial DNA sequence-based phylogenetic relationship among flesh flies of the genus Sarcophaga (Sarcophagidae: Diptera)

Abstract

The phylogenetic relationships among flesh flies of the family Sarcophagidae has been based mainly on the morphology of male genitalia. However, the male genitalic character-based relationships are far from satisfactory. Therefore, in the present study mitochondrial DNA has been used as marker to unravel genetic relatedness and to construct phylogeny among five sympatric species of the genus Sarcophaga. Two mitochondrial genes viz., cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COI) and NAD dehydrogenase subunit 5 (ND5) were sequenced and genetic distance values were calculated on the basis of sequence differences in both the mitochondrial genes. The data revealed very few genetic difference among the five species for the COI and ND5 gene sequences.

Molecular Identification of Forensically Important Indian Species of Flesh Flies (Diptera: Sarcophagidae) by Using COI Gene of Mitochondrial DNA

“…So far, the publications on the molecular identification of forensically applicable flesh flies from India are constrained to one [33]. They researched five species of flesh flies on the basis of COI gene but that work was only constrained to phylogenetic investigation and not associated to forensic entomology.…”

“…The present results are in complete agreement with Sharma et al [25] who sequenced 465 bp region from the ten flesh fly Indian species and showed 342 conserved and 123 variable and parsimony informative positions. Bajpai and Tewari [33] also studied five sarcophagid species and showed that COI showed 71 variable sites in 296 bp long sequence and only 26 sites were found to be parsimony informative. Song et al [37] noted 151 variable sites in the 552 bp long fragment of COI gene amplified from fifteen sarcophagid species of China origin.…”

“…Qing et al [41] showed 99% bootstrap support for 7 sarcophagous species of Chinese origin. Bajpai and Tewari [33] phylogenetically studied five species of Indian Sarcophagidae and demonstrated minimum evolution trees for COI and ND5 genes of mtDNA. They showed a bootstrap value of 59% to 94% which shows robustness of this gene to identify species within the genus Sarcophaga.…”

Sarcophaga maxima sp. nov. (Diptera: Sarcophagidae: Sarcophaginae), a new Australian flesh fly recognised by morphology and DNA barcoding

“…Species identification within Sarcophaga is most reliable when examining the male terminalia and checking against pictorial keys or authoritative reference material. However, several studies have tested the use of molecular data for the identification of sarcophagine flesh flies, and of Sarcophaga in particular (Wells et al ; Zehner et al ; Draber‐Mońko et al ; Bajpai & Tewari ; Tan et al ; Yadong et al ; Boehme et al ; Guo et al , , ; Meiklejohn et al , ,b; Jordaens et al . ; Arnaldos et al .…”

Ultramorphological characteristics of immature stages of a forensically important fly Parasarcophaga ruficornis (Fabricius) (Diptera: Sarcophagidae)

“…Recently, a new approach has been introduced for species identification-DNA barcoding (Wells et al 2001;Harvey et al 2003;Zehner et al 2004). Bajpai and Tewari (2010) and Tan et al (2010) used mitochondrial DNA as marker to unravel genetic relatedness and to construct phylogeny among various species of Parasarcophaga including P. ruficornis.…”