GENETIC VARIATION AMONGST FISH POPULATIONS IN RIVER GANGES andYAMUNA AND SELECTED TRIBUTARIES IN GARHWAL HIMALAYA

Abstract

India is one of the mega-biodiversity carrying countries in the world. Biodiversity is the term used to describe the variety of life found on Earth and all of the natural processes. This includes ecosystem, genetic and cultural diversity, and the connections between these and all species. The Indian Himalayan region (IHR) also encompasses substantial biodiversity. The Garhwal part of IHR is rich-in natural resources and the Ganges and Yamuna both originate in this region. These main rivers are supported by several tributaries. The importance of the tributaries, streams and small water bodies is more than just supplying water to the major rivers. Tributaries also contribute to the aquatic diversity of major Rivers. Most of the studies that investigate aquatic diversity use sample from locations that are easily accessible and generally investigated but most studies do not scan the entire length of river along with their tributaries. Individuals of some species differ with one other based on geographical locations. In case of cryptic species, morphological characters are same but they are genetically different. Identification of the cryptic species can be detected through molecular techniques, such as DNA bar-coding. DNA bar-coding is based upon the specific region of mitochondrial gene Cytochrome C Oxidase Unit I (COI), which shows major difference among species. Several species have been reported in major rivers like Ganges and Yamuna, but very few long term studies carried out scan of entire river along with scan of tributaries and sub-streams. The tributaries are also rich in the aquatic biodiversity and they contribute to diversity of major rivers also. Our research aims to generate a molecular database (DNA Barcode) for entire fish species fauna in small river/stream of Uttarakhand and investigate genetic variations based on molecular marker COI and Cytochrome b. In our study we found that river Song River (a tributary of Ganges) has diverse fish fauna with substantial genetic diversity. The mean intraspec