Genome size of three Brazilian flies from the Sciaridae family

ABSTRACT

We determined the genome size of the Brazilian sciarid flies Bradysia hygida, Rhynchosciara americana and Trichosia pubescens (Diptera Sciaridae) using absorbance measurements of Feulgen-stained nuclei belonging to these species (and chicken erythrocytes as a standard) to calculate the amount of DNA in picograms (pg) and the number of base pairs (bp), or C-value, for each of these species. The C-values were 3 x 108 bp (0.31 pg) for B. hygida; 3.6 x 108 bp (0.37 pg) for R. americana; and 1 x 109 bp (1.03 pg) for T. pubescens. The sciarids investigated in this work had considerably higher C-values than the average for previously described dipteran species, including D. melanogaster