Survey of Genetic diversity and population Genetic structure of some forensically important chrysomya spp. (Diptera: Calliphoridae) from Egypt and their implication on forensic entomology / Abeer Mohsen Mohammad M. Salem ; Supervised Fatma Kamel Adham , Nagwa A. Rashdan , Emtithal M. Abdelsamea

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Science - Department of Entomology

The investigation of molecular techniques for the accurate and correct identification of forensically relevant blow flies is one of the major aspects of research in forensic entomology. During this study, three calliphorids, Chrysomya megacephala, C. albiceps and C. marginalis were collected from four geographic locations in Egypt (Giza, Dayrout, Minya and North Sinai) and sequenced across the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene. Phylogenetic analyses using neighbor-joining, maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood methods resulted in the same topological structure and confirmed the reliability of DNA based methods for identification of all specimens. Interspecific divergence between pairs of species was 5.3% (C. marginalis/C. megacephala), 7% (C. albiceps/C. megacephala), and 8% (C. albiceps/C. marginalis). These divergences are sufficient to confirm the utility of COI gene in the molecular identification of these flies in Egypt. The maximum intraspecific divergence among individuals within a species was below 1% and the minimum nucleotide divergence between species used for phylogenetic analysis was 3.6%. This study highlights the need for thorough and diverse sampling to capture all of the possible genetic diversity if DNA barcoding is to be used for molecular identification

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