Identification of penaeid shrimp from Chilika Lake through DNA barcoding

Chilika Lake is one of the prolific habitats of shrimps in India and offers tons of commercial trading every year. The genetic diversity of penaeid shrimp species in this oldest and largest brackish water lagoon is unknown so far. The DNA barcoding is emerging as an essential supportive tool for morphology-based species identification. In this study, we have generated DNA barcode data of morphologically identified six penaeid shrimps from Chilika Lake. Most of the generated sequences revealed 99–100% similarities with the conspecific database sequences (GenBank and BOLD). More than one distinct clade in NJ tree and high-genetic variability were resulted in P. monodon (6.5% to 8.8%), L. vannamei (3.2% to 5.8%) and M. monoceros (2.3% to 3.5%). The resulted genetic variation within the species depicted different population correlate with the different sampling locations. Thus, more extensive survey and generation of more DNA barcode data of penaeid shrimp from the diverse geographical area might resolve the uncertain genetic distance within the species.