Genetic diversity of Insect farm populations of Protaetia brevitarsis seulensis (Kolbe, 1886) (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae) in South Korea inferred from COI gene sequences

Abstract

A Korean indigenous species, Protaetia brevitarsis seulensis (PBS), is popularly reared at many insect farms as valuable industrial insect resources in South Korea. However, there is no comprehensive study on the genetic diversity within the Korean PBS population as well as between morphologically closed species. Employing the rapidly evolved genetic markers such as mitochondrial DNA is important in the detection of haplotype diversity and rapid species identification of larval stage and/or its processed goods. We here examined how many genetically different haplotypes distribute in the reared PBS collected from 14 insect farms and the interspecific genetic difference between congeners using mitochondrial COI gene sequences (DNA barcoding region). As a results, the PBS was clearly separated from two related species with large genetic distances (7.98%~8.86%). In the PBS, 57 haplotypes were detected from 223 specimens with low intraspecific genetic distance (~1.3%). Among them, the most dominant haplotypes are subsequently detected in H4 (25.6%), H38 (15.7%) and H26 (10.3%). From the haplotype network and distribution analyses, we consider that many haplotypes have been mixed by artificial collections from various local places and exchanged between insect farms within South Korea. We expect that this data will be helpful in rapid species identification for its processed goods, and understanding the exact population diversity and detection of the original habitats for each haplotype of the reared PBS throughout comparing with natural populations in the further study.