Molecular identification of fruit flies, Bactrocera spp. (Diptera: Tephritidae) using mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I

Identification of fruit flies using conventional taxonomy has certain limitations owing to homoplasmy on most morphological characters and difficulty in identification in egg and larval stages super(1). On the other hand, molecular identification augments conventional taxonomy, in which species identification is not limited by polymorphism, sex and stage of development of the target species. In molecular identification of fruit flies, microsatellites super(1), internal transcribed spacer I (ITS1) super(2), amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) super(3), nuclear gene period super(4), 16S rRNA, 12S rRNA, mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase II (mtCOII) + tRNA sub(Lys) + tRNA super(5) sub(Asp), etc. have been employed as markers. Presently, the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (COBL) advocates the use of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (mtCOI) super(6) for species identification, as it exhibits reliable inter-species variation super(7). Here we report the mtCOI-based identification of three fruit flies, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel), B. correcta (Bezzi) and B. zonata (Saunders), important pests of mango (Mangifera indica L.) and guava (Psidium gujava L.) super(8).