New recorder with Morphological and molecular identifications of the Tropical leather leaf slug Eleutherocaulis alte (Ferussac,1822) from Basrah Province, Iraq

Abstract

Land slugs have been able to spread all over the world due to their possession of a set of basic characteristics and qualities such as the leathery
dorsal surface and the narrow foot that reduces evaporation during the dry period. Given the lack of any previous studies in Iraq on these slugs,
we conducted this study to record a new species of land slug Eleutherocaulis alte (ferussac, 1822). In this study, bioinformatics analysis was
used to identify the species E. alte and determine the phenotypic characteristics of this species, which was collected from Karmat Ali area,
Basrah Governorate, for a period of three months, March, April and May 2023. The results of the study showed a variation in the phenotypic
measurements (animal length, animal width) for the size categories (A, B, C), as the highest measurements in the average length and width of
the animal were observed in category A and the lowest measurements in category C. Bioinformatic analysis results based on the mitochondrial
cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene revealed five unique Haplotypes (H1 to H5) of E. alte. The largest haplotype 1 (H1) contained twentyfive sequences (24 sequences from Japan, one from the United Kingdom and one from India), followed by H3 (containing only four sequences
from Japan) and H4 (containing three sequences from India and one sequence from our current study). H2 and H5 were from India and Egypt,
respectively. In total, the Iraqi sequences were grouped into the common HaplotypeH4 between Iraq and India. In short, based on the nucleotide
level, H1 to H3 were far removed from H4 and H5. Finally, the Iraqi E. alte belonged to H4 and was more closely related to H5 than the other
Haplotypes. Although these five Haplotypes had many changes at the nucleotide levels, they shared almost similar amino acids throughout the
protein lengths. H1 and H3 had 100% amino acid identity, while H2, H4 and H5 had 98.08, 96.79 and 94.23% identity