Reliable species identification provides a sounder basis for use of species in the order Odonata as biological indicators and for their conservation, an urgent concern as many species are threatened with imminent extinction. We generated 134 COI barcodes from 36 morphologically identified species of Odonata collected from Mindanao Island, representing 10 families and 19 genera. Intraspecific sequence divergences ranged from 0 to 6.7% with four species showing more than 2%, while interspecific sequence divergences ranged from 0.5 to 23.3% with seven species showing less than 2%. Consequently, no distinct gap was observed between intraspecific and interspecific DNA barcode divergences. The numerous islands of the Philippine archipelago may have facilitated rapid speciation in the Odonata and resulted in low interspecific sequence divergences among closely related groups of species. This study contributes DNA barcodes for 36 morphologically identified species of Odonata reported from Mindanao including 31 species with no previous DNA barcode records.
Keywords: COI; DNA barcoding; Odonata; molecular taxonomy.