A short sequence of ca. 658-bp of the mitochondrial gene COI was used to investigate its utility as a DNA barcode in the medically important Simuliidae or black flies. Sixty-five species and species complexes were tested. Results indicate that the barcoding gene discriminated among morphologically distinct species with nearly 100% of efficacy and proved useful for revealing cryptic diversity. The DNA barcoding gene was also tested for revealing phylogeographic patterns in the western cordilleran Prosimulium travisi and the Prosimulium neomacropyga species-group. Phylogeographic analyses on these species revealed areas that acted as glacial refugia, postglacial history, cryptic speciation episodes and timing of the events that lead to their present-day distribution. The results obtained concur with other phylogeographic studies on similarly-distributed cordilleran organisms.
In conclusion, the barcoding gene not only resulted useful for species discrimination in black flies but also for studies at the population level, providing value-added to this molecular marker.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/17217 |
| Date | 26 February 2009 |
| Creators | Rivera Castillo, Julio Martin |
| Contributors | Currie, Douglas C. |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 2404743 bytes, application/pdf |
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