Data from: Identification of Swedish mosquitoes based on molecular barcoding of the COI gene and SNP analysis

Mosquito-borne infectious diseases are emerging in many regions of the
world. Consequently, surveillance of mosquitoes and concomitant infectious
agents is of great importance for prediction and prevention of
mosquito-borne infectious diseases. Currently, morphological
identification of mosquitoes is the traditional procedure. However,
sequencing of specified genes or standard genomic regions, DNA barcoding,
has recently been suggested as a global standard for identification and
classification of many different species. Our aim was to develop a genetic
method to identify mosquitoes and to study their relationship. Mosquitoes
were captured at collection sites in northern Sweden and identified
morphologically before the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene
sequences of 14 of the most common mosquito species were determined. The
sequences obtained were then used for phylogenetic placement, for
validation and benchmarking of phenetic classifications, and finally to
develop a hierarchical PCR-based typing scheme based on single nucleotide
polymorphism sites (SNPs) to enable rapid genetic identification,
circumventing the need for morphological characterization. The results
showed that exact phylogenetic relationships between mosquito taxa were
preserved at shorter evolutionary distances, but at deeper levels they
could not be inferred with confidence by using COI gene sequence data
alone. Fourteen of the most common mosquito species in Sweden were
identified by the SNP/PCR-based typing scheme, demonstrating that genetic
typing using SNPs of the COI gene is a useful method for identification of
mosquitoes with potential for worldwide application.