Report for the Occurrence of Artemia franciscana Kellogg 1906 in Tashk Lake, Iran

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Abstract

Artemia, a small crustacean, with high commercial value is a valuable model organism for researchers. This creature by tolerating extreme range of different environmental conditions is dispersed to more than 600 and 18 sites over the world and Iran, respectively. Tashk Lake is one the natural parthenogenetic Artemia habitat in Iran. Due to occurrence of an unknown bisexual Artemia in Tashk Lake, the species of this un-endemic Artemia was researched. In this regard, four different molecular markers as Na/K ATP-ase, 12S-16S by PCR-RFLP technique and COI and HSP26 by sequencing and subsequent Genbank data were studied. The conducted analyses as long as emphasizing to ability of molecular techniques for identifying unknown species characterized the new population as A. franciscana. These analyses also revealed a molecular diversity between the sequenced genes with the data found in the Genbank.

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