Molecular identification and distribution of Anopheles maculipennis complex in the Mediterranean region of Turkey Fatih Mehmet Simsek a, * , Celal Ulger a , Mustafa Muhammed Akiner b , Serap Senol Tuncay a , Ferhat Kiremit a , Fevzi Bardakci a a Department of Biology, Faculty of Arts and Science, Adnan Menderes University, Aydin, Turkey b Department of Biology, Faculty of Arts and Science, Rize University, Rize, Turkey article info Article history: Received 1 June 2011 Accepted 6 August 2011 Available online 18 September 2011 Keywords: Anopheles maculipennis s.s. An. melanoon An. sacharovi rDNA-ITS2 Distribution Turkey abstract The present study was set to identify the members of An. maculipennis complex, which includes effective malaria vectors, throughout the Mediterranean region of Turkey using the second internal transcribed spacer of ribosomal DNA (rDNA-ITS2) sequences from 200 specimens. Resulting sequences of this complex from the Mediterranean region revealed the presence of three species belonging to the An. maculipennis complex, namely An. sacharovi, An. maculipennis s.s. and An. melanoon. The lengths of ITS2 region were 284, 294 and 306 bp in length for An. maculipennis s.s., An. melanoon and An. sacharovi respectively. While no sequence divergence was observed within any species, An. sacharovi was the most distantly related species from An. maculipennis s.s. and An. melanoon with a sequence divergence of 15.1% and 15.4%, respectively. While An. melanoon was the rare species, An. maculipennis s.s., was the most abundant and An. sacharovi was the most wide spread one. Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Malaria has been influential as an endemic disease with a socioeconomic significance in Turkey for years. Recently, malaria cases have been reported only from the Southeast Anatolia region of Turkey (Dogan et al., 2010; Simsek et al., 2010). However the incidence of cases was on the rise and more than 10000 clinical cases of malaria were reported between 2000 and 2002. Since 2005, important successes have been achieved through malaria eradication studies. In 2005 a total of 1627 malaria cases were reported, 1595 of which were endemic vivax malaria and 32 of which were imported (WHO, 2009). Nowadays, although the endemic malaria cases are still observed in Batman, Sanlıurfa, Diyarbakir, Mardin and Siirt provinces located in South- eastern Anatolia, the number of cases considerably decreased. In 2008, a total of 136 malaria cases were reported from these regions, 49 of which were imported (WHO, 2009). Due to prevalence of malaria diseases, many investigations based on morphological characteristics have been carried out to understand the Anopheles fauna of Turkey (Kasap and Kasap, 1983a; Alten et al., 2000; Postiglione et al., 1970, 1972). A number of studies on the Anopheles species have been carried out for the purpose of vector control. Such studies were mainly based on their systematics (Postiglione et al., 1973; Kasap and Kasap, 1983a; Ramsdale et al., 2001), etiology (Demirhan and Kasap, 1995, 1996), and ecology (Kasap, 1986; Simsek, 2006) as well as establishment of their laboratory colonies (Kasap and Kasap, 1983b; Simsek et al., 2005; Yurttas and Alten, 2006) and determination of their insecticide resistance levels (Kasap et al., 1992, 2000; Luleyap et al., 2002; Alten et al., 2003). Although it has been generally effective to identify species from Turkey such as An. superpictus, An. pulcherrimus, based on their morphological characteristics, some recording errors were still made during these studies (Irdem, 1941; Postiglione et al., 1973). Therefore, the taxonomic status of Maculipennis Complex in Turkey is not yet well resolved. The presence of An. * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ90 256 218 20002107; fax: þ90 256 213 53 79. E-mail address: fsimsek@adu.edu.tr (F.M. Simsek). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Biochemical Systematics and Ecology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biochemsyseco 0305-1978/$ – see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bse.2011.08.010 Biochemical Systematics and Ecology 39 (2011) 258–265