Gąsienica P., Stec D., Lachowska-Cierlik D., Zając K. S.

gasienicapaulina03@gmail.com

Milacidae, is a family of slugs, which include medium-sized species. Currently, more than 50 species belonging to this family are grouped into two genera: Milax Gray, 1855 and Tandonia Lessona & Pollonera, 1882. Until now, the GenBank database contains sequences for only one species of the genus Milax (M. gagates, four COI sequences) and for five species of the genus Tandonia (T. budapestensis, T. kusceri, T. rustica, T. sowerbyi, T. marinelli). To date only one study presented phylogeny of these Milacidae taxa based on the sequences of the mitochondrial COI fragment. Therefore, the relationships between members of the genera Milax and Tandonia are not well recognized and knowledge on this subject is extremely residual. To fill a large gap in the knowledge regarding taxa relationships within these groups, we reconstructed phylogeny of the family Milacidae based on multiple molecular markers (16S, COI, H3, 28S rRNA) combining it with morphological data. Moreover, besides resolving the relationships between taxa within the investigated family, this study will also greatly contribute to the species identification, thanks to creation of the DNA library for newly obtained barcodes.

Acknowledgements: We thank Jolanta Jurkowska and the Museum of Natural History, Wrocław University (Poland) for making the collection of Prof. Andrzej Wiktor available for us. This work was supported by a grant from the Jagiellonian University (DS/D/WB/INoŚ/8/2019).

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