Biodiversity of Drosophilidae of Western Ghats (Coorg District) of Karnataka, India

The allele amplification and diversity of 18 microsatellite loci described for Drosophila mediopunctata (tripunctata group) was studied in two species of the Drosophila guarani group, D. ornatifrons (guarani subgroup) and D. maculifrons (guaramunu subgroup), collected in fragments of Araucaria Forest from southern Brazil. The selected loci were already tested in lineages of both species from D. guarani group; however, they were not analyzed regarding allele diversity in natural populations. In spite of the 18 tested loci have been selected among more than one hundred loci, because they displayed good amplification pattern for both species in a previous work. Only 50% of them amplified in only one of the two D. maculifrons populations analyzed, and approximately 28% presented amplification on both D. ornatifrons populations. These results are in agreement with the phylogenetic relationships that allocate the guaramunu subgroup closer to tripunctata group instead to the guarani subgroup. The higher allele diversity of the positive amplified loci was detected in D. maculifrons (≈ 9 alleles per locus). The allele number detected in D. ornatifrons was also high (≈ 7 alleles per locus). These results suggest that the loci that displayed positive and quality amplification are useful markers to be applied in population genetic studies of these species. The low rate of amplification in the populations from Araucaria Forest sampled here suggests they have an accentuated genomic differentiation to the previous D. maculifrons and D. ornatifrons populations analyzed.