Haplotype analysis based on the D-loop region of mitochondria of the fish Wallago attu (Bloch and Schneider, 1801) collected from four major river basins of the Northern Part of the Eastern Ghats, India

In this study, we examined the genetic diversity and population structure of the Silurid catfish, Wallago attu (Bloch and Schneider 1801), across four major river basins of the northern part of the Eastern Ghats in the state of Odisha, India by targeting the mitochondrial D-loop region with the help of designed primers for the first time to obtain the nucleotide sequences for the mentioned area. Mitochondrial D-loop region from 35 W. attu individuals collected from 16 different sample sites in four major rivers of Odisha were obtained and analysed. The study reveals high gene diversity (Hd: 0.87) of the species W. attu in different populations in the four river basins. The study enumerates a total of 13 haplotypes with 3 major clades along with Pairwise Fixation Index (FST: 0.022) and higher gene flow (Nm: 5.13) values indicating no significant differences (p-value > 0.05) and the recent population expansion is evident from the Tajima’s D value ≤ 0. This is the first report of the haplotype networking of this species based on the mitochondrial D-loop region for the said area. The different populations of the species W. attu in the present study have shown no significant genetic variation which indicated that there may be reduced adaptive potential and there is a need for strategic intervention based on genetic data to come up with effective management practices for the wild population of the fish W. attu, which is under vulnerable category of IUCN.