Determination of the species boundaries of genus Dolerus (Hymenoptera: Tenthredinidae) using the COI gene

Abstract

New generation molecular approaches and methods are being developed to identify species and determine species boundaries. There are many different approaches of species delimitation used to assess the species richness of poorly studied and highly diverse invertebrate taxa. The basis of these approach is DNA barcoding studies. DNA barcoding has been used as a powerful tool for species identification and delimitation. Although DNA barcoding studies have been carried out on the family Tenthredinidae, there are no studies on species delimitation. Herein, we compare species delimitation analyzes belong to Dolerus genus based on cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) region. In this context, it was used five species delimitation approaches (ABGD, ASAP, DNA Taxon, PTP and GMYC). Thirty-six morphotypes were used in the study. These morphotypes separated into six species (Dolerus triplicatus, Dolerus germanicus, Dolerus puncticollis, Dolerus nigratus, Dolerus sp1 and Dolerus sp2) in ABGD, ASAP and DNA Taxon approaches. Two additional species were introduced because of the tree-based PTP and GMYC approaches. These species were named as Dolerus sp3 and Dolerus sp4 which were separated from Dolerus puncticollis clade and Dolerus nigratus clade, respectively. These analyzes were supported by the phylogenetic tree and CBC entities that constitute the ITS2 data.