Efficacy of DNA barcoding for the species identification of spiders from Western Ghats of India

Abstract

DNA barcoding has emerged as an additional tool for taxonomy and as an aid to taxonomic impediments. Due to their extensive morphological variation, spiders are taxonomically challenging. Therefore, all over the world, attempts are being made to DNA barcode species of spiders. Till now no attempts were made to DNA barcode Indian spiders despite their rich diversity. We have generated DNA barcodes for 60 species (n = 112) of spiders for the first time from India. Although only 17 species were correctly identified at the species level, DNA barcoding correctly discriminated 99% of the species studied here. We have also found high intraspecies nucleotide divergence in Plexippus paykulli suggesting cryptic diversity that needs to be studied in detail. Our study also showed non-specific amplification of the Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI) gene of endosymbiont bacteria Wolbachia. However, these cases are very rare and could be resolved by the use of modified or group specific primers.

Keywords:

• Araneae
• COI
• mislabelling
• species identification
• Wolbachia

Acknowledgements

We express our sincere thanks to authorities of Department of Zoology, Fergusson College, Pune-04 for allowing to use the microscope for the morphological identification of the spiders. We would also like to thank Mr. Kunal Yadav for his help during this work.

Disclosure statement

There is no conflict of interest. All authors have read and agree with the content of the paper.

Funding information

This work was supported by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) India the MCC project grant no. BT/PR10054/NDB/52/94/2007.