Phylogenetic Relationships among Dabbling Duck Species in Korea using <i>COI </i>Gene Variations in mtDNA

Abstract

Korea is an important geographical location for wintering dabbling ducks. In order to investigate their relationships, 92 ducks from ten breeds were sampled from nine different geographical areas in Korea. Of these, 38 samples are represented as Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), Spot-billed (Anas poecilorhyncha zonorhyncha) and domestic (Anas platyrhynchos domesticus) ducks. They are very closely related to commercial duck breeds. The partial (746 and 749 bp) mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) COI (Cytochrome Oxidase I) gene sequences were obtained and 126 SNPs were identified, which belong to 23 haplotypes. Eighty five Anas and ten Aix genus have been used for phylogenetic analysis. Based on the neighbor-joining (NJ) method, duck species used in this study can be well differentiated, except for the three duck breeds, Mallard, Spot-billed and domestic ducks, where most of the individuals belong to haplotype 12. The highest K2P distance, 0.31, was observed in Spot-billed ducks, with a range of 0.07-10.96 between the species. However, there was no correlation between geographic distance (km) and K2P distance (%) between the species. Based on our results, duck species can be discriminated with COI sequences, except for the three closely related breeds, and this can be effectively used for an appropriate conservation program for the wild duck breeds in Korea.Key words: COI gene, dabbling ducks, genetic diversity, phylogeny J. Poult. Sci., 49: 163-170, 2012 Introduction Many species of wild ducks seasonally migrated for breeding purposes in winter to take full advantage of limited resources in the world environment (Masashi et al., 2000). A large number of wild ducks which moved to Korea every year to compose a mating group, resulted in the frequent occurrence of interspecific crossing (Masashi et al., 2000;Kulikova et al., 2004). Approximately, 10% of ducks are found to interbreed through cross-breeding, which is known to often outcross hybrids (Johnsgard, 1960(Johnsgard, , 1963Panov, 1989;Tubaro and Lijtmaer, 2002). Wild ducks in Korea are classified typographically into Anseriformes-Anatidae (49 species) (OSK, 2009). Anseriformes-Anatidae is broadly classified into Anserinae and Anatinae. Anserinae is subdivided into three tribes such as Anserini (13 species) including the whistling duck and wild goose, Tadornini (3 species) including Common Shelduck and Cairinini (1 species). Anatinae is also subdivided into three tribes such as Anatini (13 species) including Mallard ducks, Aythyini (15 species) including Common Pochard and Mergini (4 species) including merganser (Hoyo et al., 1992;Lee et al., 2000;Paul, 2008; OSK, 2009). Taxonomical relationships for these wild ducks are classified based on basic approaches like morphology, anatomy, behavioral evolution, molecular biology, etc. (Livezey, 1986;Hoyo et al., 1992;Lanyon, 1993;Carole et al., 2002). However, DNA based phylogenetic relationships are more reliable in the discrimination of ducks species.To increase duck meat production, ducks were hybridized from Mallard ducks in...

Genetic Diversity Analysis of South and East Asian Duck Populations Using Highly Polymorphic Microsatellite Markers

“…For discrimination analysis using genetic information, genetic markers should include highly polymorphic information, which is needed in various types of genetic markers. Mitochondrial DNA sequence variations were frequently used for the identification of wild ducks, and COI gene and D-loop control region were frequently used for duck population discrimination analysis, and also effectively applied to the classification of wild birds ( Hebert et al, 2003 ; Jin et al, 2012 ; 2014 ). However, mtDNA sequence variations have limited ability in the discrimination of domestic duck populations, especially Mallards.…”

“…This can also be inferred from the previous discrimination analysis study using the mtDNA COI gene in domestic and wild ducks. The domestic duck ( Anas platyrhynchos domesticus ) has much closer genetic relationships with the Mallard (0.07) and Spot-billed Duck (0.23) ( Jin et al . , 2012 ).…”

“…Many duck breeds and genetic linkage maps have been reported ( Maak et al, 2003 ; Yinhua et al, 2005 ; Huang et al, 2006 ). Some wild duck classification studies have used cytochrome oxidase I (COI) and D-loop control region sequence phylogeny analysis, but there were difficulties in discriminating domestic ducks that shared alleles from wild Mallards and Spot-billed Duck ancestors ( Jin et al, 2012 ). Otherwise, wild ducks were discriminated well using mtDNA sequence information ( Jin et al, 2014 ).…”

Genetic Diversity and Phylogenetic Analysis of South-East Asian Duck Populations Based on the mtDNA D-loop Sequences

“…The mtDNA cytochrome c oxidase subunit I ( COI ) genetic variation has been used to discriminate and establish the phylogenetic relationships among Korean dabbling duck species (Jin et al, 2012). The genetic polymorphism and phylogenetic results obtained from D-loop region in five Indonesian native duck breeds suggested that the maternal inheritance patterns of Indonesian native ducks were relatively similar to those of the mallard ( A. platyrhynchos ) and Eastern spot-billed duck ( A. p. zonorhyncha ) (Purwantini et al, 2013).…”

Characterizing the temporal patterns of avian influenza virus introduction into Japan by migratory birds

“…The sequences were analyzed by Nucleotide BLAST ( https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi ) for species identification. However, it should be noted that the Mallard and Eastern Spot-billed duck cannot be differentiated based on mtDNA COI gene sequence because the two species share the same sequence [ 8 , 24 ]. Hence, if the BLAST search results indicated that the most similar sequence was derived from Mallard or Eastern Spot-billed duck, the result was categorized as “Mallard/Eastern Spot-billed duck group”.…”