Genetic diversity of central European Cyclopsspecies

I studied the genetic diversity of central European Cyclops (Crustacea, Copepoda) species. The present thesis deals with all species of the genus Cyclops known from the Czech Republic (C. strenuus, C. vicinus, C. abyssorum, C.insignis, C. singularis and C. furcifer); the occurrence of C. singularis and C. heberti there is recorded herein for the first time. Other two species under study are C. ochridanus, an endemic species from the Ohrid lake, and an apparently new species of the genus Cyclops from the Retezat Mts. in Romania. Populations of Cyclops abyssorum from Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland were studied as well. The amplification of a part of the COI mitochondrial gene, using the universal arthropod primer (Folmer et al. 1994) or primers derived from it, was successful only in less than half of the populations under study. In contrast, amplification of a part of the 12S srRNA gene, using the primer of Machida et al. (2002), worked very well in all the populations. Cyclops abyssorum, a morphologically and ecologically variable species, showed very low between-population sequence polymorphism. The ecotypes "praealpinus", "divulsus" and "tatricus" seem to lack a species or subspecies status. They are likely to be, as Einsle (1980) supposed, morphological variations only. Populations of C...