Mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I-sequence variation in three scorpion species from southeast Turkey

Abstract

Southeastern Anatolia is the richest region in Turkey in terms of scorpion fauna. In this region, a number of studies on the fauna of scorpions, as well as epidemiology and clinical findings of scorpion stings in terms of public health, have been carried out, but there is no study on the phylogenetic relationships between species. In this study, 18 individuals of three species were collected from five locations. Sequence analysis was conducted by amplification of a 546 base region from part of mtDNA COI region. Six polymorphic regions and four haplotypes were determined for A. crassicauda, a species important for humans and mean haplotype and nucleotide variations were 0.602 and 0.00555 respectively. Sequences from all individuals were subjected to the blast tool of the NCBI database and assessed with close species, so a phylogenetic tree was formed. On the tree, samples from Þanlýurfa and Diyarbakýr were on different branches while the sample from Iran (HM567333) was on a branch from the other two. The species that was the closest to Scorpio maurus from Batman (KF953944) was the sample from Diyarbakýr. Because there was no other sequence for Buthacus macrocentrus, it was located close to the Buthacus sp. (KF548116) sample. As a result, the locations of sample species were determined as a result of phylogenetic analyses.