Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Termites have colonized many habitats and are mainly abundant in the tropical ecosystems. Particularly, termites of the genus Odontotermes are widely distributed in the Indo-tropics and are the most important decomposers in the old World tropics. The species within this genus are difficult to differentiate morphologically due to the lack of up to date keys and also due to very little inter specific morphological variations. As a result, the taxonomy of Odontotermes has not been adequately worked out. In insects, the mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase subunit 1 (ND1) gene region has proved to be a suitable marker especially for the identification of lower level taxonomic entities such as populations and sister species. So, to shed light on Odontotermes diversifications, we sequenced fragment of mitochondrial ND1 gene to elucidate species boundaries within Odontotermes species/populations collected from Northern India and identified named taxa with which they may be associated. The nucleotide composition was found to be biased towards transitions with a significantly high A+T content ranging from 63.77% to 64.66%. Sequences of the out group taxa were retrieved from GenBank and the data were aligned using CLUSTAL omega software. Sequence analysis and phylogenetic reconstruction was carried out in MEGA 6.06. The results supported the monophyly of the genus Odontotermes and the unidentified sample occupied a position within the the O. obesus lineage indicating its possible origin.

Biography

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