Small differences in Cytochrome-b sequences within the genus Sabanejewia

Partial mitochondrial tRNA(Glu) and Cytochrome-b (Cyt-b) sequences of the f ollowing taxa were used for distance calculations: Sabanejewia romanica, S. vallachica, S. bulgarica, S. radnensis, S. montana, S. larvata, S, sp. and three populations of S. balcanica. Large values of genetic similarity were observed between all analysed golden leaches. Calculations of the Tajima-N ei distances and the algorithms of Neighbor-Joining (NJ) leads to a basal p osition of S. larvata. In a second step, S. montana was also separated. The NJ-tree showed two ingroups: 1) S. romanica. S. balcanica 1+2 and S. radne nsis and 2) S. vallachica, S. balcanica 1+3, S. bulgarica and S. sp. The se paration of the ingroups has only limited support by weak bootstrap values. Small sequence differences found in this study were in contrast to morphol ogical characters and pigmentation patterns described in previous studies.