Morphological characters and DNA barcodes to separate Oenopia sauzeti Mulsant and O. mimica Weise (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), two externally similar lady beetles from the Indian subcontinent

Abstract

Oenopia sauzeti Mulsant and O. mimica Weise (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) are externally very similar and commonly misidentified species of lady beetles distributed in the Indian subcontinent. Diagnostic characters including male genitalia are illustrated for these species to facilitate their identification. The cox1 mtDNA sequences of O. sauzeti and O. mimica (658 bp) had only 89% similarity upon pair-wise alignment, which distinguished them with 75 nucleotide differences, thus confirming that these are distinct species. DNA barcodes with accession numbers AGIMP042-15 for O. sauzeti and AGIMP043-15 for O. mimica were obtained.