Molecular and biometric characterizations of the Western king prawn Melicertus latisulcatus (Kishinouye, 1896) in the Egyptian Red Sea.

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Genetic and Genetic Engineering Lab, Aquaculture Division, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (NIOF), Qaitbay, Alexandria, Egypt.

2 Genetic Engineering and Molecular Biology Division, Faculty of Science, Menoufia University, Egypt.

3 invertebrates Lab, Aquaculture Division, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisherires

Abstract

Although the western king prawns Melicertus latisulcatus (Kishinouye, 1896) are among the highly-priced shrimp species in the world, there is a great shortage in research dealing with both morphological and molecular clues for the identification of these species. Therefore, the morphological study was designed to provide a full morphological description of this important species. The morphometric analysis proved the variability of the relative growth between sexes suggesting that length-weight relationships could be used as important criteriafor selective breeding programs. For molecular identification DNA was extracted from the samples to provide genetic barcodes of this species using polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-amplification of 16SrRNA and cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COI) genes. The results clearly showed that, the Egyptian M. latisulcatus speciesis genetically closely related toall Melicertus species, while both barcoding and phylogeny of this species resulted in clear species discrimination. Furthermore, the samples identified in the current study seem to belong to a single origin, differing from those from other geographical locations where the species was found.Overall, this study suggested a valuable tool for assessment of prawn populationsat both fisheries and genetic levels, providing a toolfor managementas well as for the optimization of its aquaculture.

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