– 124 – Journal of Genetics and Molecular Biology Vol. 18, No. 2, 124-130, June 1, 2007 Introduction Biodiversity deals with biological and geographical entities such as genes, chromo- somes, species, families, and habitats or bio- geographic regions. Insects forms one of the most crucial components of the biodiversity. It comprise of 75% of total animal king- dom. Lepidoptera is the second largest order among insects comprising of butterflies, skippers, and moths that falls in 127 fami- lies and 46 super families described so far. Around 98% of species fall under Ditrysia in order Lepidoptera. They are omnipresent in all biotic environments. Their wide range of ecological adaptability makes them fittest in the extreme ecosystems. This means that in order to understand the nature of these insects it is essential that we have both dis- tinction and description of biological and biogeographical entities. Therefore, there is a need to develop a precise, rapid, efficient and highly reproducible tool to address the biodiversity in terms of its biological and RAGEP Marker System (RAGEP) and its Validation: A Novel Approach to Assess Insect Biodiversity. Chandrasekhar N., Neetha N.V., Linda Koshy Vaidyan and Moinak Banerjee* Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Human Molecular Genetics Lab, Poojapura, Trivandrum, Kerala, India Insects are omnipresent and encompass 3/4 th of the whole animal king- dom. Their wide range of ecological adaptability makes them fittest in the extreme ecosystems. Therefore, there is a need to assess their biodiversity in terms of biological and biogeographical identities. We have devised a novel marker system called Random Amplified Genome Encoding Primer (RAGEP) which has been described to assess the migratory pattern and intra species diversity in H. puera. In the present study we propose to char- acterize the RAGEPs for its heritability, stringency, reproducibility, species specificity and development of species-specific tags and genome specific tags (nuclear and mitochondrial) using RAGEP marker system. We provide con- vincing results to accept RAGEP system as good marker system to address biodiversity in terms of its biological and biogeographical identities Key words: RAGEP, insect, biodiversity. *Corresponding author: Dr Moinak Banerjee, Human Molecular Genetics Laboratory, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, 695 014, Tel: +91-471-234-5899, 234-8753 (O), 234-3367 (R), Fax: +91-471-234-8096, e-Mail: moinak_ban@hotmail.com, moinak@gmail.com This article is available on line at: http://www.ceps.com.tw/