Delineating closely related species of Tylostega Meyrick (Lepidoptera: Crambidae: Spilomelinae) from mainland China using DNA barcodes

Abstract

Integrative taxonomic study of three species of the genus Tylostega revealed that the genetic distances of the COI gene among the tested species was relatively large (3.27–7.60%). The Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD) system performed better than the Barcode Index Number (BIN) in discriminating closely related species. This work provides a molecular baseline for future integrative taxonomic study of Crambidae.

Keywords:

• ABGD
• BINs
• integrative taxonomy
• male genitalia

Acknowledgements

The authors are sincerely thankful to Dr. Jean-François Landry, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada for improving, reviewing and providing valuable comments on the manuscript. Special thanks are extended to Dr. John Richard Schrock, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS, USA, Dr. Christopher Dietrich, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Campus USA and Dr. Murray Fletcher, Orange Agricultural Institute, Orange NSW Australia, for reviewing and improving of the manuscript. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor-in-chief for their comments to improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31772508, 31201733], Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province [2016JM3026], National Key research and Development Plan [2016YFC0501502], the Chinese Universities Scientific Fund [2452015012] and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China [2005DKA21402, 2011FY120200].