Establishment of a COI Haplotype Baseline and Genetic Diversity Evaluation of Vespa soror (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) in Southern China Based on Mitochondrial Gene Sequences

Vespa soror, is an important resource insect that is widely distributed in China. However, there have been few reports on the genetic diversity of this species so far. We based our study on Cytochrome c Oxidase Subunit I (COI) gene as a molecular marker, to estimate the genetic diversity of V. soror. The length of the COI gene is 614 base pairs (bp), and a total of 26 haplotypes were obtained. Among these haplotypes, Hap_3 and Hap_13 are the dominant haplotypes. Overall, V. soror exhibits high genetic diversity, with a haplotype diversity (Hd) of 0.941 ± 0.010 and a nucleotide diversity (Pi) of 0.01068 ± 0.00079. Significant genetic differentiation has occurred among populations, with pairwise Fixation Index (Fst) values greater than 0.25 accounting for over two-thirds of all comparisons. The overall FST value was 0.47872. Despite fluctuations in the degree of genetic differentiation among different populations (−0.076 to 1.00), the overall level of genetic differentiation remained within a relatively high range. For most populations, the Tajima’s D and Fu’s Fs test results were positive, and both were non-significant (p > 0.10). AMOVA attributed 15.82%, 36.37%, and 47.81% of total variation to among-group, among-population within-group, and within-population variation, respectively. Overall, it exhibits high genetic diversity, significant genetic differentiation.