DNA barcodes identify Central-Asian Colias butterflies (Lepidoptera, Pieridae)

By

Laiho, Juha
Stahls, Gunilla

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2013

Original Publication

ZooKeys

Volume

365

Pages

175-196

Subjects

Barcoding , Central Asia , COI , Colias , RpS2

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.365.5879

 

Abstract

A majority of the known Colias species (Lepidoptera: Pieridae, Coliadinae) occur in the mountainous regions of Central-Asia, vast areas that are hard to access, rendering the knowledge of many species limited due to the lack of extensive sampling. Two gene regions, the mitochondrial COI ‘barcode’ region and the nuclear ribosomal protein RpS2 gene region were used for exploring the utility of these DNA markers for species identification. A comprehensive sampling of COI barcodes for Central-Asian Colias butterflies showed that the barcodes facilitated identification of most of the included species. Phylogenetic reconstruction based on parsimony and Neighbor-Joining recovered most species as monophyletic entities. For the RpS2 gene region species-specific sequences were registered for some of the included Colias spp. Nevertheless, this gene region was not deemed useful as additional molecular ‘barcode’. A parsimony analysis of the combined COI and RpS2 data did not support the current subgeneric classification based on morphological characteristics.