Investigations on genetic diversity and relationships among Channa species using AFLP-capillary electrophoresis

The genetic diversity and relationships among eight species of Channa were investigated using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP)-capillary electrophoresis. Ten EcoR I/Mse I primer pairs were selected out of thirty eight and were used for further AFLP analysis. The total amplified bands, consistency of bands and polymorphic bands ranged from 114 to 206, from 0 to 12 and from 114 to 196, respectively, with corresponding averages of 156.2; 4 and 152.2 respectively. The proportion of polymorphic bands ranged from 93.62 to 100%, with an average of 97.44%. The similarity coefficients among eight Channa species ranged from 0.5365 to 0.7875. The dendrogram generated after unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic means (UPGMA) clustering with NTSYS software indicated that the eight Channa species could be divided into four major clusters according to the genetic similarity coefficient of 0.58. Channa striata and Channa micropeltes were clustered into a separate branch that was far from the other six species and Channa argus kimurai (Shih) was closest to Channa argus. These results could be useful for conservation as well as for guiding research on captive breeding of Channa species.