Molecular Approach to the Identification and Phylogenetic Biogeography of Snail <em>Telescopium telescopium</em> Using mt-COI Gene Sequences

Abstract

We aimed to apply DNA barcoding tool for the molecular identification of horn snails T. telescopium using mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene (mt-COI) and to investigate their evolutionary relationship along with location-specific bio-geographical variations. The molecular data sets of this study indicate that strong probability of T. telescopium species taxonomic confirmation using mt-COI sequences. Results of the phylogenetic analysis suggest that Telescopium sp. was monophyletic with disseminated nodes and the evolution of group II originated from group I. The substantial genetic distance among the mt-COI sequences (0.005 to 0.184) were noticed. Large divergence between the south-west coast of India and Australia region population indicates limited gene flow between the two continents. Our study suggests that the genera Telescopium is globally ubiquitous but genetically showing inter-region differentiation. We conclude that mt-COI gene can be used to identify gastropod T. telescopium species.

Barcoding of South African forest‐dwelling snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda) reveals widespread cryptic diversity

“…DNA barcoding of the maternally inherited cytochrome oxidase c subunit I (COI) locus has been adopted as a standardized approach over the past two decades for species-level identification and when morphology-based taxonomy is known to be problematic (Dopheide et al, 2019;Galan et al, 2018;Kundrata et al, 2015;Modica et al, 2016;Pec ˇnikar & Buzan, 2014;Vences et al, 2005). In molluscs, DNA barcoding has been successfully used to discriminate closely related species (Buckley et al, 2011;Kelly et al, 2007;von Proschwitz et al, 2009), to evaluate phylogenetic relationships (Blacket et al, 2016;Davison et al, 2009;Galan et al, 2018;Modica et al, 2016;Nantarat et al, 2019;Palanisamy et al, 2018;Perez et al, 2014;Prévot et al, 2013;Trewick et al, 2009;von Oheimb et al, 2019), to identify specimens (Barr et al, 2009;Palanisamy et al, 2020;Weigand et al, 2011), and in assembling a reference library for species identification (Barco et al, 2016). To date, only two small-scale studies have used DNA barcoding analyses to identify and distinguish mollusc species in South Africa (van der Bank et al, 2013;van der Bank & Greenfield, 2015).…”