Ascidians are ecologically important components of marine ecosystems, yet the taxonomy and diversity of ascidians remain largely unexplored. Only <60% of reported ascidian species in India have been taxonomically described and identified and the rest of the species remain unidentified due to uncertainty in the morphology-based identification. We explored the usefulness of CO1 gene sequences for molecular level identification and mtDNA data in assessing phylogenetic relationships of 15 ascidian species. The mean sequence divergences within and among the species fell into the mean divergence ranges found in ascidian group. Species that are most similar grouped together formed a cluster. Clusters of species in a clade indicate that the species are closely related. Species that are highly divergent formed a separate branch. This study has concluded that the CO1 gene sequence is an effective tool to ascertain the molecular taxonomical studies on ascidians.

海鞘是海洋生态系统的重要生态组成部分，但海鞘的分类和多样性仍未得到开发。在印度，只有不到60％的已报告海生物种通过分类学进行了描述和鉴定，而由于基于形态学的鉴定存在不确定性，其余物种仍未得到鉴定。我们探索了CO1基因序列在评估15种海鞘物种的系统发育关系中对分子水平鉴定和mtDNA数据的有用性。物种内部和物种之间的平均序列差异落在海鞘组中发现的平均差异范围内。最相似的物种组成一个集群。进化枝中的物种簇表明物种密切相关。高度不同的物种形成了一个单独的分支。