Morphological and COI Sequence Based Characterisation of Marine Polychaete Species from Great Nicobar Island, India

DNA barcoding has proved to be a powerful alternative method to traditional morphological approaches, allowing to complement identification techniques for living organisms. In this study we assess intraspecific and interspecific genetic divergence Among the 6 genera marine polychaetes from Great Nicobar Island of Souther part of the Andaman and Nicobar Island. The present study results suggested that high level of interspecific genetic variation was observed between Lysidice collaris and Terebella ehrenbergi (0.727). The minimum genetic distance (0.316) was observed between genera Phyllodoce fristedti and Ceratonereis mirabilis. Morphological identification of the polychaetes in this study was supported by the molecular data, as shown by the congruence and high similarity between the sequences produced in the present study and those available in GenBank. This study presents the first information on DNA barcoding for polychaetes species in the Great Nicobar Island, and it establishes the effectiveness of DNA barcoding for identification of marine polychaetes species from Andaman and Nicobar Island, thus making it available to a much broader range of scientists.