DNA Barcoding of Red Sea Fishes from Saudi Arabia – The first approach

AbstractDNA barcoding is a worldwide initiative. Although there is a campaign to barcode all fishes, there is no information on the DNA barcoding of Red Sea fishes. With the aim of strengthening the BOLD/barcode database with the sequences of Red sea fishes this preliminary study was conducted with six different fish species collected from coastal waters of Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. Among the six fish samples collected from the same sampling site, two sequences were novel. So, it is necessary to carry out large scale sampling covering a bigger area of Red Sea because there is high possibility to detect new/cryptic species from the unexplored biodiversity rich Red Sea.