Karyotype characteristics, chromosomal polymorphism and gene COI sequences of Chironomus heteropilicornis Wülker, 1996 (Diptera, Chironomidae) from the South Caucasus

Abstract. The study presents data on the karyotype characteristics, features of chromosomal polymorphism and the gene COI sequences of Chironomus heteropilicornis Wülker, 1996 (Diptera, Chironomidae) from the South Caucasus. We found 8 banding sequences in the Caucasian population. Overall, The Caucasian population of the species can be characterized as having a low level of polymorphism. We found one new banding sequence hpiA2 in the banding sequence pool of Ch. heteropilicornis. We observed inversion polymorphism only in the arm F. The dendrogram of genetic distances by Nei criteria (1972) shows a clear separation of the Caucasian population from populations of Siberia. At the same time, the distance between populations of Siberia and the population of South Caucasus (0.379–0.445) almost reach the mean distance (0.474 ± 0.314) between subspecies (Gunderina 2001). Due to this, we can assume that the population of South Caucasus separated from Siberian populations at the level of subspecies. Constructed on data for COI gene sequences the phylogenetic tree estimated by the Bayesian inference shows that the sequences of Ch. heteropilicornis from the South Caucasus form a separate line in the general branch of Ch. heteropilicornis sequences. At the same time, calculated K2P genetic distances between Ch. heteropilicornis sequences from Norway and Caucasus (2.0–2.2%) do not exceed the 3% threshold for the genus Chironomus.