A DNA-barcoding approach to identifying juvenile freshwater mussels (Bivalvia:Unionidae) recovered from naturally infested fishes

Abstract

AbstractWe developed a multilocus deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)-barcoding approach to identify newly transformed juvenile mussels collected from naturally infested fishes in a federally protected waterway that is home to a diverse mussel community, the St Croix River (Minnesota/Wisconsin, USA). We used new and publicly available data downloaded from GenBank to build reference databases for identified adult mussels. We assessed the efficacy of the mitochondrial loci cytochrome oxidase c subunit I (COI) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide dehydrogenase subunit 1 (ND1) for DNA barcoding. We concluded that the barcoding gap between average intra- and interspecific genetic distances is wider for ND1 than for COI, but both loci perform well for species identification in character-based phylogenetic analyses. Almost every species formed a monospecific clade with high bootstrap and posterior-probability support. We obtained newly transformed juvenile mussels by collecting individuals of 3 different fish species t...