Morphometrical and molecular survey of some water beetles of Manipur

Abstract

The genus Laccophilus from different wetlands were collected during the period 2012 to 2017 in nine districts of Manipur. The specimens comprised of five species viz., Laccophilus parvulus, Laccophilus flexuous, Laccophilus inefficient, Laccophilus anticatus and Laccophilus chinensis. Taxonomic study of Laccophilus species was more or less a challenging task due to varying degree of variation such as elytral pattern, genetalia and quite difficult to identify the species only by morphological taxonomy. To solve the problems an attempt to confirm the identities of the beetles mitochondrial COX I genes were sequenced and phylogenetic tree was constructed with sequences from databases. The sequences of Laccophilus anticatus and Laccophilus chinensis reported here were distinct from the available congeneric sequences in databases. They formed two haplotypes, L. anticatus was near to L. comes and L. alluaudi while L. chinensis was quite distant from L. anticatus.