The seven-spotted lady beetle, Coccinella septempunctata (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), known also as the seven-spot ladybird, is natural enemy for aphids and has a broad ecological range, living almost anywhere there are aphids for it to eat. In order to understand the genetic diversity and geographic variation of the species we sequenced a portion of mitochondrial COI gene (658 bp) and complete nuclear internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) collected from nine Korean localities. A total of 21 haplotypes (CSCOI01 ~ CSCOI21), with the maximum sequence divergence of 4.56% (30 bp) were obtained from COI gene sequence (from 78 individuals), whereas 65 sequence types (CSITS201 ~ CSITS265), with the maximum sequence divergence of 2.06% (11 positions) were obtained from ITS2 (from 79 individuals), indicating substantially larger sequence divergence in mitochondrial gene sequence. Both COI gene and ITS2 shows the distribution pattern that only a few haplotypes or sequence types are widely distributed, whereas majority of them are highly restricted in one geographic location, even represented as a single individual. Unlikely the ITS2 sequence types the mitochondrial COI haplotypes evidenced the presence of two main phylogenetic groups, reciprocally monophyletic to each other. Geographically, these two groups are spread in all localities surveyed. Considering both COI gene and ITS2 sequence together, current our data may suggest the presence of ancestral polymorphism, rather than on-going speciation, but more scrutinized analysis will be performed soon. Due partially by the presence of both COI groups in all surveyed localities, the genetic diversity estimates of all localities are similar from the perspective of COI gene, but ITS data showed extremely lower genetic diversity of one islet locality, Anmyeon-do (locality 2; 0.002530 vs. 0.008054 ~ 0.012060). Analysis of gene flew estimates between localities indicates that most populations are highly interconnected to each other. However, one islet locality, Anmyeon-do (locality) has shown statistically significant distance from the remaining localities on the basis of only ITS2 data (FST = 0.19 ~ 0.34), requiring scrutinized phylogeographic inference on this population with expanded sampling. As more scrutinized analysis is performed, further fruitful inference on the geographic contour of the species might be available.

The seven-spotted lady beetle, Coccinella septempunctata (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) has a broad ecological range, living almost anywhere there are aphids for feeding. In this study, we isolated and characterized a total of 10 microsatellite loci from the species. The loci were validated and characterized using 25 samples collected from five Korean localities. The number of alleles and heterozygosity observed at each locus ranged from 4 to 16 and from 0.37 to 0.89, respectively. None of the loci deviated significantly from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and there was no indication of significant linkage disequilibrium among pairs of loci. These microsatellite markers should be very valuable markers for population genetic studies of Coccinella septempunctata.

최근 곤충자원은 약용 및 식용으로 활용하려고 많은 연구가 되고 있으며 미래의 자원으로 발전할 수 있는 가능성은 충분하다. 본 연구는 곤충자원 중 칠성무당벌레와 무당벌레를 이용하여 생물학적 활성과 함께 약용 및 식용으로의 활용가능성을 알아보고자 하였다. 생물학적 활성을 알아보기 위하여 이들 추출물을 이용하여 항산화관련 실험인 DPPH, FRAP, linoleic acid 산화 억제실험을 하였으며, 분자 염증에 관련된 유전자인 Cyclooxygena