2.4. Copepod phylogeny
The 18S rDNA gene sequences of five copepod genera (used in the present study) were extracted from the Genbank (NCBI). These sequences were aligned and the consensus representative sequence from each genus was obtained using Mega X version. These consensus sequences were used for studying the phylogenetic relationship between the copepods at genera level using Neighbor-joining tree in Mega X [37].