Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 3, 2026
A Rapid Method to Confine and Safely Handle Bees in the Field
Published on: August 23, 2024
COI barcode versus morphological identification of Culex (Culex) (Diptera: Culicidae) species: a case study using
Magdalena Laurito1, Tatiane M P de Oliveira2, Walter Ricardo Almirón1
1Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas y Tecnológicas, Centro de Investigaciones Entomológicas de Córdoba, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas y Tecnológicas, Centro de Investigaciones Entomológicas de Córdoba, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina.
Abstract:
Sequences of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) mitochondrial gene from adults of 22 Culex (Culex) species from Argentina and Brazil were employed to assess species identification and to test the usefulness of COI for barcoding using the best close match (BCM) algorithm. A pairwise Kimura two-parameter distance matrix including the mean intra and interspecific distances for 71 COI barcode sequences was constructed. Of the 12 COI lineages recovered in the Neighbour-joining topology, five confirmed recognised morphological species (Cx. acharistus, Cx. chidesteri, Cx. dolosus, Cx. lygrus and Cx. saltanensis) with intraspecific divergences lower than 1.75%. Cx. bilineatus is formally resurrected from the synonymy of Cx. dolosus. Cx. maxi , Cx. surinamensis and the Coronator group species included were clustered into an unresolved lineage. The intraspecific distance of Cx. pipiens (3%) was almost twice the interspecific between it and Cx. quinquefasciatus (1.6%). Regarding the BCM criteria, the COI barcode successfully identified 69% of all species. The rest of the sequences, approximately 10%, 18% and 3%, remained as ambiguously, mis and unidentified, respectively. The COI barcode does not contain enough information to distinguish Culex (Cux.) species.
