Low heterogeneity in populations of the terrestrial earthworm, Metaphire peguana (Rosa, 1890), in Thailand, as revealed by analysis of mitochondrial DNA COI sequences and nuclear allozymes

Seven new species of the earthworm genus Metaphire Sims & Easton, 1972 from Thailand (Clitellata: Megascolecidae)

“…n. is sexthecal and presents genital markings at 17/18 and 18/19, so it keys out with the peguana group, which consists of three other species, M. bahli (Gates, 1945), M. peguana (Rosa, 1890) and M. saigonensis (Omodeo, 1957). Of these, M. peguana and M. bahli have been recorded in Thailand, whereas M. saigonensis is currently placed in synonymy with M. peguana (Blakemore 2002;Somniyam & Suwanwaree 2009;Bantaowong et al 2011b;Prasankok et al 2013).…”

“…The genus Metaphire is very abundant, diverse and widespread, and represented by 10 nominal species: M. anomala (Michaelsen, 1907), M. bahli (Gates, 1945), M. bipora (Beddard, 1900), M. grandipenes Bantaowong & Panha, 2011, M. houlleti (Perrier, 1872, M. peguana (Rosa, 1890), M. perichaeta (Beddard, 1900), M. planata (Gates, 1926), M. posthuma (Vaillant, 1869) and M. virgo (Beddard, 1900). Among these species, M. peguana is one of the most common indigenous species in Thailand (Bantaowong et al 2011b;Prasankok et al 2013).…”

Pheretimoid earthworms (Clitellata: Megascolecidae) cultivated in a vermifacility in Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, with description of a new species

“…The introduction and utilization of the African nightcrawler to the Philippine soils was a result of the lack of knowledge on the indigenous resources in the country. However, as a result of active taxonomic work on earthworm COI sequences of Pheretima species from Aspe & James (2018) and M. bahli from Blakemore (2016b) and Prasankok et al (2013) were retrieved from NCBI for phylogenetic analysis with the sequence of the species from this study. The sequences were aligned using MUSCLE (Edgar 2004).…”

Dispersal constraints and fine-scale spatial genetic structure in two earthworm species

“…proportion of variance in allele frequencies that is among populations) and related statistics to measure gene flow. Most authors who have tested the relationship between genetic and geographical distances between earthworm populations using these population-based measures, whereby species are arbitrarily divided into partially isolated populations, have found significant genetic differentiation and no or a weak isolation-by-distance (IBD) pattern (Enckell et al, 1986;Kautenburger, 2006;Cameron, Bayne & Coltman, 2008;Prasankok et al, 2013;Torres-Leguizamon et al, 2014, but see Novo, Almodóvar & Díaz-Cosín, 2009;Novo et al, 2010a). All these studies were carried out at the regional/ landscape scale, except that of Novo et al (2010a), which investigated the genetic structure of a homogastrid earthworm at fine spatial scale using F-statistics (0.064 km 2 ).…”