COI barcode versus morphological identification of Culex ( Culex ) (Diptera: Culicidae) species: a case study using samples from Argentina and Brazil

• Main Authors: Magdalena Laurito, Tatiane MP de Oliveira, Walter Ricardo Almiron, Maria Anice Mureb Sallum
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Ministério da Saúde 2013-01-01
• Series: Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz.
• Subjects: Culex; identification; COI; morphology; genetic divergence
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0074-02762013000900110&lng=en&tlng=en

Sequences of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) mitochondrial gene from adults of 22 Culex ( Culex ) species from Argentina and Brazil were employed to assess species identification and to test the usefulness of COI for barcoding using the best close match (BCM) algorithm. A pairwise Kimura two-parameter distance matrix including the mean intra and interspecific distances for 71 COI barcode sequences was constructed. Of the 12 COI lineages recovered in the Neighbour-joining topology, five confirmed recognised morphological species ( Cx. acharistus , Cx. chidesteri , Cx. dolosus , Cx. lygrus and Cx. saltanensis ) with intraspecific divergences lower than 1.75%. Cx. bilineatus is formally resurrected from the synonymy of Cx. dolosus . Cx. maxi , Cx. surinamensis and the Coronator group species included were clustered into an unresolved lineage. The intraspecific distance of Cx. pipiens (3%) was almost twice the interspecific between it and Cx. quinquefasciatus (1.6%). Regarding the BCM criteria, the COI barcode successfully identified 69% of all species. The rest of the sequences, approximately 10%, 18% and 3%, remained as ambiguously, mis and unidentified, respectively. The COI barcode does not contain enough information to distinguish Culex ( Cux. ) species.