Molecular comparison of the genus Junonia (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) in Myanmar

Abstract

Molecular comparison of species belonging to the genus Junonia collected from Myanmar was completed using mtDNA sequence data from 605-bp cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI). Six species were sequenced, aligned, and used to construct phylogenetic trees. The base composition of the COI sequences was 37.8% T, 15.4% C, 31.4% A, and 15.4% G, revealing strong AT bias (69.2%). The sequence distance of Junonia ranged from 1.5% to 9.0%. Nucleotide substitution primarily occurred through transition rather than transversion. Phylogenetic trees were constructed by the neighbor-joining (NJ) and maximum likelihood methods, using Hypolimnas misippus as the outgroup. Both trees had almost identical topologies. All COI sequences of each species fell in the same cluster as those of the same species obtained from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Species in Junonia exhibited the following relationships: (((J. orithya + J. hierta) + J. lemonias lemonias) + J. almana almana) + (J. atlites + J. iphita). The clustering results were almost identical to current morphological classification.