• SUNIL KUMAR P
• DURGA NARAYANAN

Fishes show an astonishing diversity of shapes, sizes, and colours. The delimitation and recognition of fish species is not only of interest for taxonomy and systematists, but it is also a requirement in studies of natural history and ecology, fishery management, tracking the dispersal patterns of eggs and larvae, estimations of recruitment and spawn areas, and authentication of food products. Fish identification is traditionally based on morphological features. However, due to high diversity and morphological plasticity, in many cases, fish and their diverse developmental stages are difficult to identify by using morphological characteristics alone. For many animal taxa, sequence divergences within the 5′ region of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene are generally much greater between species than within species. This in turn suggests that the approach is extensively applicable among phylogenetically distant animal groups. This investigation successfully identified Puntius parrah and Puntius mahecola at molecular level using cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene. The inter- and intra-specific pairwise distances analysis using Neighbor-Joining K2P model have clearly validated prominent range of genetic distance between the Puntius parrah and Puntius mahecola species.

DNA barcoding, mitochondrial genome, phylogenetic analysis, Puntius parrah, and Puntius mahecola.

"MOLECULAR CHARACTERISATION OF PUNTIUS SPECIES BASED ON CYTOCHROME C OXIDASE SUBUNIT I (COI) GENE ", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.11, Issue 2, page no.d504-d513, February-2024, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2402361.pdf

"MOLECULAR CHARACTERISATION OF PUNTIUS SPECIES BASED ON CYTOCHROME C OXIDASE SUBUNIT I (COI) GENE ", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.11, Issue 2, page no. ppd504-d513, February-2024, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2402361.pdf