Recent African derivation of Chrysomya putoria from C. chloropyga and mitochondrial DNA paraphyly of cytochrome oxidase subunit one in blowflies of forensic importance.
Chrysomya chloropyga (Wiedemann) and C. putoria (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) are closely related Afrotropical blowflies that breed in carrion and latrines, reaching high density in association with humans and spreading to other continents. In some cases of human death, Chyrsomya specimens provide forensic clues. Because the immature stages of such flies are often difficult to identify taxonomically, it is useful to develop DNA-based tests for specimen identification. Therefore we attempted to distinguish between C. chloropyga and C. putoria using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence data from a 593-bp region of the gene for cytochrome oxidase subunit one (COI). Twelve specimens from each species yielded a total of five haplotypes, none being unique to C. putoria. Therefore it was not possible to distinguish between the two species using this locus. Maximum parsimony analysis indicated paraphyletic C. chloropyga mtDNA with C. putoria nested therein. Based on these and previously published data, we infer that C. putoria diverged very recently from C. chloropyga.
Wells
J D
JD
Department of Biology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506, USA. jdwells@mail.wvu.edu
Lunt
N
N
Villet
M H
MH
D000818:Animals; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D004175:Diptera / Q000235:genetics*; D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005554:Forensic Medicine; D006239:Haplotypes; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D021122:Protein Subunits / Q000235:genetics; D013019:South Africa
D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial; D021122:Protein Subunits; D003576:Electron Transport Complex IV