Understanding Genetic Diversity of Episyrphus balteatus (De Geer, 1776) From Different Regions of Himachal Pradesh On the Basis of Designed COI Primer

Abstract

During present investigation, a total nine localities i.e. Darlaghat (1563m), Jatoli (1464m), Kotla Panjola (1190m), Chandol (1418m), Dhar (1360 m), Alsindi (1132 m), Naldehra (2050 m), Ghanahatti (1668 metres) and Potters hill (1887 m) of Punica granatum were selected for the field surveys of insect pollinators from which Episyrphus balteatus was observed at four localities of Himachal pradesh i.e. Dhar (1360 m), Ghanahatti (1668 m), Kotla Panjola (1190m) and Naldehra (1887 m) and samples of species were collected. All the sampled species of Episyrphus balteatus from four localities were characterized genetically through mtCOI gene for the intraspecific diversity studies. Multiple sequence alignment between all the mtCOI sequences of Episyrphus balteatus revealed the similar pattern between the nucleotides of all the sequences. Nucleotide content analysis of all the species at first, second and third codon position revealed the average A+T percentage (69.96%) found to be higher than C+T (30.13%). The A+T bias was pronounced in general for this region for all codon positions. It was found that transition/transversion value of COI (R) is 0.00 which concluded that there is insignificant neutral selection in samples of Episyrphus balteatus of Himachal Pradesh. Phylogenetic analysis studies showed the sample of Naldehra and Ghanahatti were found to be closely related to each other and of Dhar and Kotla Panjola samples were also phylogenetically close to each other. Distance matrix also clearly indicates the very less difference among the sampled species proves that there is no genetic diversity between them.