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Molecular identification and characterization of Muscid flies (Diptera: Muscidae) of medico-veterinary importance from the Gangetic plains of Eastern India

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A Correction to this article was published on 15 December 2022

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Abstract

The Muscid flies belonging to the order Diptera, Family Muscidae, are notoriously famous for their ability to transmit disease-causing organisms to humans, livestock, and even plants. The huge species count of this group not only makes the classical method of identification laborious but also error-prone. Therefore, in this study, we analysed cytochrome oxidase 1 (cox1) barcodes to test their ability to discriminate between studied taxonomic groups. In our study, we used a total of 42 specimens, excluding the outgroup, of 14 species belonging to 5 genera representing 4 subfamilies were used. 11 specimens were collected from the lower Gangetic Plains of West Bengal, India, including the vulnerable Sagar Islands, each showing a very high AT content (average = 69%), especially in the 1st codon position. Cox1 barcodes were able to distinguish between species with very high interspecific genetic divergence. The percentage of intraspecific genetic divergences ranges from 0% to 2.2% for the studied dataset, with the interspecific range being very high, from 0.58% to 28.8%. 1000 bootstrapped Maximum likelihood (ML) with Kimura-2-parameter phylogenetic tree and similar bootstrap-based IQ-Tree was constructed based on cox1 gene, for clarity. The ML tree is used to understand the delimitation of the species using Poisson Tree Process (PTP) analysis. The phylogenetic and delimitation study determined that most of the genus level clusters are monophyletic. The subfamily Muscinae showed non-monophyletic lineage as seen by the separation of genera Musca from genera Haematobia in both ML and IQ-Tree.

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Change history

  • 16 December 2022

    The original online version of this article was revised to correct the ascension number of some raw data from OL444726 to OL539726.

  • 15 December 2022

    A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42690-022-00934-z

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to The Director, Zoological Survey of India, for her moral support and giving provisions for necessary facilities. Authors are also grateful to Dr. Vikas Kumar, Scientist – E, Molecular Systematics Division, Zoological Survey of India, for giving the facilities to work on the molecular systematics portion of this paper.

Funding

The work is funded partially by The Zoological Society, Kolkata (grant no: ZSK/NIA-B1/ 2021) to the first author. The core financing facilities from the Zoological Survey of India is responsible for supplying the laboratory and chemical facilities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Diptera Section, Zoological Survey of India, M-Block, New Alipore, Kolkata, 7000053, India

    Debjani Ghosh, Oishik Kar, Debdeep Pramanik, Arka Mukherjee, Saikat Sarkar, Koustav Mukherjee, Atanu Naskar & Dhriti Banerjee

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  1. Debjani Ghosh
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  2. Oishik Kar
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  3. Debdeep Pramanik
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  6. Koustav Mukherjee
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  8. Dhriti Banerjee
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Contributions

Sample collection and preservation: KM, DP; Methodology and data accumulation: DG, OK, AM; Data analysis and manuscript writing: DG, OK, Manuscript review: AN, OK; GIS map generation: SS; Laboratory material and equipment provided by: DB.

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Correspondence to Atanu Naskar.

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Ghosh, D., Kar, O., Pramanik, D. et al. Molecular identification and characterization of Muscid flies (Diptera: Muscidae) of medico-veterinary importance from the Gangetic plains of Eastern India. Int J Trop Insect Sci 42, 3759–3769 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42690-022-00900-9

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