D3068: A phylogeny of Euphaea (Odonata: Euphaeidae)

Euphaea is the biggest genus of the family Euphaeidae with 33 species found only in Asia. About 75% of these species are endemic. The aims of this project are to construct a phylogenetic tree of Euphaea from cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and morphology to explore species boundaries and test whether COI is an acceptable marker to identify to species. We will use the molecular data from BOLD Systems and GenBank sequence database and combine those with our own data. We have identified 15 species out of 33 species that have either COI or COII sequences from both sources. Study of phylogenetic tree of Euphaea has been done only partly in East Asia and most of the research discussed about the local distribution in a specific country. None has brought this group to an extent of combining the species across regions. Therefore, this research needs to be carried out. This project is still in its early stages, we hope that within this 1-2 months, we will get a satisfactory result.