Studies on DNA barcoding of some Indian species of hawk moths (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae)

A partial segment of 583 bp (approx) of COI gene for eight species of family Sphingidae was analysed in the present study. It constituted surveying various districts of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand located at varied altitudes. The sequences have been added to the database at Gen Bank NCBI. The analysis revealed mean K2P divergence of 0.37% at intraspecific level, 6.0% at interspecific and 13.6% at intergeneric level. A hierarchal increase in K2P mean divergence across different taxonomic levels giving an intraspecific range of 0.0 to 3.1%, interspecific range of 3.3 to 10.4% and intergeneric range of 11.1 to 16.1%.