Journal Article
Molecular investigation of cavernicoles from Kotumsar Cave in Northern Eastern Ghats, India
Laskar, B.A., Kundu, S., Sulthana, R., Adimalla, H., Jaiswal, D., Tyagi, K., Kumar, V. and Chandra, K.
Record Number:
5501
Year:
2021
Journal:
Records of the Zoological Survey of India
Pages:
337-345
Volume:
121
Abstract:
The Kotumsar cave is situated in the Eastern Ghats and has been reported by the existence of 14 different organisms
morphologically. To reassess the living taxa and hitherto unreported organisms, intervention of molecular tool is required to
corroborate the exact faunal diversity. In the present study, we dealt with the environmental samples and opportunistically
encountered living specimens from both deep and transition zones of the Kotumsar cave. The morphological and integrated
approach confirmed the existence of Rhinolophus rouxii (Medellin et al., 2017) (bat), Kempiola shankari Sinha and Agarwal,
1977 (cricket), Heteropoda leprosa Simon, 1884 (spider). Further, the collected environmental DNA (eDNA) samples were
successfully identified as Fejervarya pierrei (Dubois, 1975) (frog), Indoreonectes evezardi (Day, 1872) (fish), Metrocoris
sp. (true bug), Barytelphusa cunicularis (Westwood, 1836) (crab), Trigoniulidae sp. (millipede), and Megascolecidae sp.
(worm). Hence, the present investigation through combined approaches by both morphological and molecular data helps
to add six more organisms to the faunal checklist of Kotumsar cave. The study also contributed the genetic information of
cavernicoles in the global database from India. This genetic information would further help to pursuing other biological
studies and adopt better conservation strategies of cave-dwelling organisms and restoration of the colligated ecosystem.
Keywords: Cave Fauna, Conservation, DNA Barcoding, Environmental DNA (eDNA), New Record
Times Cited:
1
Relevent Species: