Abstract

The flying fox (Pteropus giganteus) also familiar with the name of the greater Indian fruit Bat belongs to the order Chiroptera and family Pteropodidae. Current research emphasis on the DNA barcoding of P. giganteus in Azad Jammu Kashmir. Bat sequences were amplified and PCR products were sequenced and examined by bioinformatics software. Congeneric and conspecific, nucleotide composition and K2P nucleotide deviation, haplotype diversity and the number of haplotypes were estimated. The analysis showed that all of the five studied samples of P. giganteus had low G contents (G 19.8%) than C (27.8%), A (25.1%) and T (27.3%) contents. The calculated haplotype diversity was 0.60% and the mean intraspecific K2P distance was 0.001% having a high number of transitional substitutions. The study suggested that P. giganteus (R=0.00) do not deviate from the neutral evolution. It was determined from the conclusion that this mtDNA gene is a better marker for identification of Bat species than nuclear genes due to its distinctive characteristics and may serve as a landmark for the identification of interconnected species at the molecular level and in the determination of population genetics.

Highlights

  • Bats (Order: Chiroptera) offer important ecosystem services such as pollination, seed dispersal and insect pest suppression (Kunz et al, 2011)

  • Because of the alignment species were grouped into definite clusters. These five Bats specimens were named as P. giganteus because they offered maximum sequence similarity with the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) (99.84 to 100%) and Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) (100%) reference sequence of P. giganteus (KT291772.1) of Assam, India (Table 2)

  • The efficacy of c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) barcodes has strongly been validated by this study for identifying the Indian flying fox

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Summary

Introduction

Bats (Order: Chiroptera) offer important ecosystem services such as pollination, seed dispersal and insect pest suppression (Kunz et al, 2011). Flying foxes are mainly significant players in island ecosystems where they often work as seed dispersers and keystone pollinator both within and between islands (McConkey and Drake, 2007; McConkey and Drake, 2015). Chiroptera comprises many closely linked species which are sharing very similar ecologies and morphologies (Clare et al, 2007). These sort of similarities in morphology results in overlooked diversity (Mayer et al, 2007). Indian Flying Fox (P. giganteus) is an extensively dispersed species of Bats that present in the different tropical areas of central Asia, mostly between China and Pakistan (Bates and Harrison, 1997). In Pakistan, these Indian flying foxes are widely distributed in the areas of Sindh, Punjab and Northwest Frontier Province (Sheikh and Molur, 2004)

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