Pet and turtle: DNA barcoding identified twelve Geoemydid species in northeast India

Abstract

Geoemydid turtles are one of the most imperilled fauna on the planet, with nearly half of them are threatened with extinction due to bushmeat crisis, traditional medicine, and the illegal pet trade. Classical taxonomy often fails to identify the pet-kept turtle specimens due to amorphous form, unusual shell colouration owing to poor storage in captivity or intensely tinted for high demanding value. The DNA barcoding technique has evidenced as a supportive tool for accurate species identification in systematics research and discerned the nameless taxa in forensic sciences. We tested the effectiveness of DNA barcoding tools for identifying the pet-kept Geoemydid turtle in northeast India. The 36 generated sequences are readily delineated into 12 Geoemydid species using molecular data. The overall mean genetic distance of the studied Geoemydid turtles dataset is 15.3% and ranges from 3.4% to 22.6% between the species. The NJ, ML and Bayesian phylogeny also resulted monophyletic clustering and discriminated all the studied species. The present study contributes DNA barcode sequences of Geoemydid turtles in the global database and also affirms the on-going illegal pet trade of highly threatened species in northeast India. ARTICLE HISTORY

The first complete mitochondrial genome of the Indian Tent Turtle, Pangshura tentoria (Testudines: Geoemydidae): Characterization and comparative analysis

“…Most Geoemydids are adapted to freshwater ecosystems; however, a few prefer estuarine and terrestrial habitats (Ernst, Altenburg, & Barbour, ). India is regarded as one of the turtle hotspots in the globe harboring 16 Geoemydid species (Buhlmann et al, ; Kundu, Kumar, Laskar, Tyagi, & Chandra, ). These species are distributed from the north to east, and up to the northeastern region of India, except Vijayachelys silvatica , which is a southern endemic (Deepak, Praschag, & Vasudevan, ).…”

The complete mitochondrial genome of the endangered Assam Roofed Turtle, Pangshura sylhetensis (Testudines: Geoemydidae): Genomic features and phylogeny

“…The evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered (EDGE) freshwater turtle, P. sylhetensis (family Geoemydidae), is endemic to India and Bangladesh. Due to habitat fragmentation, anthropogenic threats and illegal poaching, the populations of P. sylhetensis have remarkably declined across its range [80][81][82]. Hence, P. sylhetensis is categorized as an 'endangered' species in the IUCN Red data list, 'Appendix II' in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and 'Schedule I' species in Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.…”

Mitochondrial DNA discriminates distinct population of two deadly snakes (Reptilia: Elapidae) in Northeast India

“…Both the specimens were morphologically identified and vouchered at the Department of Zoology, Mizoram University, and the tissue samples were preserved in À30 C at the Center for DNA Taxonomy laboratory, Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Kolkata, for downstream molecular analysis. The genomic DNA isolation, PCR, purification of the PCR products, and bidirectional sequencing were performed by the standardized protocols (Kundu et al 2018) Figure 1. The generated sequences were checked through SeqScanner V1.0 (Applied Biosystems Inc., CA, USA), nucleotide BLAST (https://blast.…”