Genetic diversity of Conogethes (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) species complex infesting castor and cardamom Kammar Vasudev1,*, Prabhulinga T2, Kumar K. P.1, Shashank P.R.2, Chakravarthy A.K.2, Singh Sandeep3 1Department of Entomology, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru, 560065 2Division of Entomology, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012 3Department of Entomology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, 141004 *Email: 4547vk@gmail.com
Online published on 23 July, 2019. Abstract Genetic diversity of Conogethes spp. infesting castor and cardamom was studied using mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene. Phylogenetic analysis of Conogethes populations collected from different locations gave two distinct clades. The pairwise genetic distance analysis between the individuals varied from 0.000 to 0.076, and this indicates the presence of high genetic divergence within the Conogethes populations. The maximum intraspecific pairwise distance in Conogethes bred on castor was 0.010 when compared to the maximum intraspecific distance of Conogethes bred on cardamom was 0.072. The nearest neighbour distance between Conogethes bred on castor and cardamom was 5.23%, indicating wide genetic variability between the two populations. Two distinct phylogenetic clades and higher genetic divergence of more than 5% between the Conogethes population on castor and cardamom were obtained. This clearly suggests that the variation in Conogethes populations breeding on castor and cardamom are genetically heterogeneous and are two different species. It is now confirmed that C. sahyadriensis infests cardamom and C. punctiferalis infests castor. Top Keywords C. sahyadriensis, C. punctiferalis, phylogenetic analysis, cytochrome oxidase I, genetic diversity, clades, genetic distance, divergence. Top |