DNA barcode record of some common spiders from Punjab,Pakistan

Spiders are important insect predators and being used as model organisms in various investigatory studies however,work on this group is difficult due to the constrains in their species level identification. dna-barcoding is a promising approach to minimize the difficulties of taxonomists to delimit species. current study was designed to provide first barcode record of some common spiders from punjab,pakistan. the standard barcode region (658 base pairs of cytochrome c oxidase subunit i),in multiple specimens of all species,was sequenced. dna based data corresponded the morphological study,confirming the presence of five species i.e.,clubiona analis thorell,1895,cyrtophora citricola (forskal,1775),leucauge decorata (blackwall,1864),neoscona theisi (walckenaer,1841) and oxyopes javanus thorell,1887. there was clear gap in intraspecific and interspecific values of genetic distances. for every species,the maximum interaspecific divergence was less than the minimum distance to its nearest-neighbour. the divergence values within and between species ranged from 0-1.6% and 17.6-23.7%,respectively. five species were also clearly separated based on parsimony analysis. it is concluded that dna barcoding is a reliable tool to delimit studied spider species.