Molecular Identification of Carpenter Bee Xylocopa pubescens Spinola from Central Sulawesi, Indonesia

Xylocopa pubescens Spinola was identified at subgenus level by its external morphology. This can be easily differentiated by the mesosoma covered dorsally with yellow hairs. Males are smaller than females, and they can be distinguished by a narrow head and yellow pubescence covering their entire body. An individual from Central Sulawesi was successfully sequenced for the barcode region of mitochondrial cox1. Sequence length was 673 bp (0% ambiguities) with no evidence of stop codons. Comparison with the DNA barcode library using the BOLD ID Engine resulted in a 99.61% of similarity with an exemplar of X. pubescens. NCBI Blast resulted in 93.46% of similarity with the related species X. aestuans.