Hi, you are right: ITS and COI are common genes but if you will find easily differences for a common pest species?! I think it will be very difficult and time-consuming! Cheers, Nadine

since identification is difficult, it is alright to sequence the insect and compare it to genbank? Are the sequences in the Genbank enough for similarities comparison?

Actually, i work on fungi and the fungal sequences are pretty well seuqenced for comparison. The original name for comparison should depend on the experience of the worker for morphological identification too since the name of that insect on Genbank should original arise from morphological identification. Am I right?

sometimes you only found larval stage of an insect and want to find its identity. should i use two genes to compare the result of BLAST search in the genebank?

COI is commonly used for identification of insects and unless you have your own reference/voucher specimens to compare to then a BLAST search may give you the answer. Morphological identification may help to support your findings if comparing to an unvalidated reference. A recent publication has focused on fungi and pests which describes primers you could use for identification, see 'Molecular identification of dipteran pests (Diptera: Sciaroidea) from shiitake mushroom'

Thanks so much Louise

http://www.q-bank.eu/

It is database about pests and disease. Many methods of identification: PCR, ELISA, Sequencing.

I think COI is the best as it is common used, a lot of copies to compare in NCBI and provide accurate identification to the species level.