The Species Identity Of The Two Color Morphs Of Northern Snakehead (Channa Argus) Based On Mtdna Control Region Sequences

The control region for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been considered as one of the most effective molecular markers in the study of identification for fish species, which has a fast evolutionary rate. And thus, in the present study, investigation of genetic comparison was performed based on the complete sequences of mtDNA control region for "Bicolor" and "White" types of northern snakehead (Channa argus) due to an uncertain classification of them. The results showed that the genetic distance for the inter-species ranged from 0.000 to 0.492 for the Channidae family. And the analysis of sequences showed that there were nine haplotypes in 60 individuals, which were eight unique and one shared haplotypes. In addition, the genetic distance for inter-species of all the haplotypes ranged from 0.000 to 0.004. And the mean pair-wise genetic distance between the two color morphs were estimated to be 0.001. This indicated that the "Bicolor" and "White" types of northern snakehead belong to the same species at the molecular level. Moreover, all the haplotypes were gathered together by the Neighbour-Joining (NJ) tree, further confirming that the two kinds of snakehead morphs belong to one species.