Identification of Triplophysa species from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) and its adjacent regions through DNA barcodes.

The genus Triplophysa is the largest and most difficult to identity morphologically fish group of superfamily Cobitoidea with 140 currently valid species, and is mainly distributed in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) and adjacent regions. Most species within this genus possess highly similar morphological characteristics for adaption to the highland environment and are very difficult to be identified only based on morphology. The traditional species identification, mainly based on external morphological diagnostic characters, leads to inconsistent results in many cases. Herein, we provided a molecular method based on mitochondrial cytochrome c subunit I (COI) for the identification of Triplophysa fishes. Thirty-three Triplophysa species, 244 individuals, were used to determine whether barcoding was effective in discriminating species for this genus. The mean intraspecific and interspecific K2P distances ranged from 0 to 14.9% (mean, 2.9%) and 0 to 23.4% (mean, 9.7%), respectively. The tree-based analysis displayed most of species formed discrete clusters with strong bootstrap support values (>90%). The results showed that most of Triplophysa species could be identified by DNA barcode and indicated DNA barcode could be used as a molecular marker for these species.