First evidence of the genetic structure of Neurergus strauchii munzurensis

Until 2016, two subspecies of Neurergus strauchii were identified; at this time, one more subspecies was described from Tunceli as N. s. munzurensis. However, this study mainly focused on morphological characters. We aim to test of Neurergus species, including N. s. munzurensis taxa by phylogenetic analysis, using partial base sequences of 12S rRNA and D-loop genes. For this purpose, we reconstructed Bayesian Inference and Maximum Likelihood trees with other Neurergus samples. According to the results, phylogenetic tree topologies demonstrate that N. crocatus was separated from the N. strauchii-N. barani lineage and the N. strauchii group have shown monophyly. Also, N. s. munzurensis showed higher genetic distances with N. barani (1.1%) and N. s. strauchii (0.8%) while genetic distances were only determined as 0.5% within N. barani and N. s. strauchii. N. s. munzurensis was found to be a genetically distinct taxon, following its previous morphological description. This study obtained the first evidence on better explaining the taxonomic status of N. s. munzurensis.