DNA BARCODING STUDY OF SHELLED GASTROPODS IN THE INTERTIDAL ROCKY COASTS OF CENTRAL WAKAYAMA PREFECTURE, JAPAN, USING TWO GENE MARKERS

Abstract

The coasts of Wakayama Prefecture are known to be among the most biologically diverse coastal areas of Japan, and thus have a rich assemblage of shelled gastropods. In this paper, we report the result of our DNA Barcoding of shelled gastropods of the intertidal area of the Nada Coast in central Wakayama, using the mitochondrial genes COI and the nuclear gene Histone H3 as markers. In order to do so, we collected up to five individuals from 12 species of shelled gastropods from the intertidal rocky beach. Collected samples were first identified morphologically and then vouchered at the University Museum of the University of Tokyo. DNA sequence comparisons and phylogenetic analyses indicated that both genes have enough substitutions to differentiate species. We also found that the sequence data for most of our target species are not available on Genbank. Our result presented here indicated that we were not only successful in barcoding/identifying the target gastropod species in the area, but also contributed to the building of a set of reference DNA sequences for future DNA-based environmental and biodiversity monitoring, besides providing sequence data for future systematics studies of this group.