DNA barcoding of Amblyceps congeners (Siluriformes: Amblycipitidae) from Brahmaputra drainage in northeast India

The genus Amblyceps is recognized with 18 valid species inhabiting in fast flowing rivers mostly in South and Southeast Asia. We generated 10 mtCOI sequences for four species of Amblyceps from Brahmaputra River drainage that along with conspecific database sequences were analysed in MEGA and Mr. Bayes while Automatic Barcode Gap Discover (ABGD) was performed at web interface. Lowest between species K2P ranged from 8.7% to 16.4% compared to highest within species K2P of only 2.2%. Molecular data clearly delineated studied Amblyceps congeners into four distinct species by all the three methods of analysis employed that was congruent with the morphology based identification at species level, except a minor morphological variation observed for A. mangois specimens. Our results agree with the recent resurrection of A. arunchalensis from synonym of A. mangois. We provide three new sequences for A. laticeps and identified a mislabelled sequence of A. apangi in database.