Accessing the sand fly diversity of Tocantins, Northern Brazil: species delimitation using COI DNA barcoding

Abstract

Sand flies (Diptera, Psychodidae, Phlebotominae) are considered natural vectors of infectious agents, such as viruses, bacteria and protozoa. About 1,060 species are recognized, of which 73 have been recorded in the state of Tocantins, located in the transition of Amazon and Cerrado biomes, Northern Brazil. Here, we surveyed the sand fly fauna in different environments of the municipality of Palmas, including caves. Also, we evaluated a fragment of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) as reliable for species delimitation in this region. The morphological identification of 163 sand flies revealed the presence of 26 species distributed in 13 genera. Of these, Lutzomyia itambe, Deanemyia samueli, Pintomyia gruta, Psathyromyia barretti, and Sciopemyia servulolimai had not yet been recorded in the state of Tocantins, thus, the sand fly fauna of the state is composed of 78 species. The first DNA sequence of Edentomyia sp., were generated, and probably correspond to an undescribed species, and new studies are needed to verify their real taxonomic identity. Also, eight nominal sand fly species were COI-sequenced for the first time, improving the DNA repositories for molecular species identification. The use of COI DNA barcodes proved to be efficient for identifying sand fly species in the state of Tocantins and revealed the existence of cryptic diversity for Nyssomyia whitmani and Psathyromyia aragaoi which need further investigations using an integrative taxonomy approach. However, COI sequences was ineffective in delimiting species of Evandromyia (Aldamyia) and Psychodpygus Chagasi series, and our limited sampling should be evaluated in more robust datasets to check the real usefulness of DNA sequences in identifying sand flies.