Diversity and molecular identification of bird species from South Punjab, Pakistan

The present one-year study was conducted in selected sites in South Punjab, Pakistan. A total of 2634 bird specimens were recorded belonging to 33 species 12 orders and 23 families. The avifauna recorded was a combination of bird species found in both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Passeriformes was the most dominant order followed by Columbiformes and Falconiformes. Shannon-Weiner diversity index was calculated as 3.261, Simpson’s diversity index was 0.9562 and Evenness was 0.8149 showing homogenized species distribution. DNA of a few species was successfully extracted from whole blood by phenol-chloroform method and quantification was done on Thermo Scientific NanoDrop 2000. DNA was amplified using a COI primer set and after trimming ambiguous bases, the obtained COI fragment was 670 bp. The obtained DNA sequences were submitted to NCBI Genbank and accession numbers were obtained. The neighbor-joining tree was constructed based on p-distance using MEGA 10. The overall, genetic divergence was 0.154±0.009. It can be concluded that compiling a public library of DNA barcodes associated with identified specimens could contribute to a new token for species identification. The present study confirmed the efficacy of COI barcodes in the identification of avifauna from the study area. High bootstrap values in the N-J tree indicate that most of the South Punjab bird species seem to have a related genetic structure. It is recommended that further comprehensive studies on genetic diversity should be conducted across more diverse geographical locations in Pakistan. This would help identify cryptic species and provide a clearer understanding of the phylogenetic relationships among avian species in the region.