Mitochondrial and Nuclear DNA for Identification of Forensically Important Flesh Flies (Sarcophagidae: Boettcherisca Spp).

Morphology-based identification of flesh flies (Family: Sarcophagidae) is normally limited to genus level due to their high similarities in characteristics. Even though identification to species level is possible, expertise in taxonomy is still needed; as sarcophagid female flies are extremely difficult to identify. In this study, a molecular approach was used to examine the use of 12S & 16S ribosomal mitochondrial DNA (1172 bp) and Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) region of nuclear DNA (~1500 bp) to discriminate four species of the subgenus Boettcherisca namely, Boettcherisca javanica, B. peregrina, B. karnyi and B. highlandica. Neighbour-Joining phylogenetic tree was generated for each gene. Interspecific values calculated using the Kimura-2-parameter distance model were in the low range of 0.5%-1.3% and 0.5%-1.9% for 12S & 16SrDNA and ITS region respectively. However, identifications of B. karnyi and B. peregrina using ITS; and B. peregrina using 12S & 16S alone can be ambiguous. Therefore phylogenetic tree analyses of both genes showed a likely for these specimens to be distinguished and confirmed the potential of these genes as specific sarcophagid identification markers.