Morphological and Molecular Identification of Three Genera of the Family Heptageniidae (Ephemeroptera) from Ava Sheen Branch/ Greater Zab Tributary, North of Iraq

Abstract

The aquatic Heptageniidae family of Ava-sheen branch (Greater Zab Tributary) in Duhok Governorate/ Iraq was studied. Samples were collected using Surber stream sampler to study their diagnostic morphological characteristics and molecular phylogenetic profile using a nuclear gene 16s ribosomal RNA. The morphological and molecular identification supported that the three species, Epeorus longimanus, Heptagenia elegantula and Ephemerella cornutus belong to Heptageniidae family, while the molecular results also confirmed the monophyletic origin of these three genera.

Updated check-list of the mayflies (Insecta: Ephemeroptera) of Iraq

“…A different identification procedure was used by Khudhur and Shekha 2020 for the other three extra-limital mayfly species reported from Iraq, Epeorus longimanus Eaton, 1883, Heptagenia elegantula (Eaton, 1885) and Serratella tsuno Jacobus & McCafferty, 2008 (treated under the name Ephemerella cornutus Gose, 1980 - for the classification of this Japanese species, see Jacobus and McCafferty (2008) ). In this case, all three species were identified by searching for the most similar 16S sequence in GenBank using BLAST search ( Khudhur and Shekha 2020 ). However, the sequences of a vast majority of Middle Eastern species are not deposited in GenBank; thus, they cannot be associated with a query sequence using BLAST.…”

“…The barcoding fragment of mtDNA (COI) was acquired for some locally-collected species by M. Al Saffar, but remains mostly unpublished (some of these sequences were incorporated in Sroka et al 2019 ). Recently, Khudhur and Shekha (2020) have performed a molecular species identification (using 16S rDNA) of some Heptageniidae taxa.…”

Detection and Identification of Novel Genes from Fungi Isolated from Wastewater

“…Wastewater is a very rich environment for many components which play an important role in changing a DNA sequences of many organisms as a result of expose to pollution and mutagen elements like heavy metals, antibiotic, nutrient and other sources of antagonisms of other living organisms, [15][16][17][18][19].…”