Abstract: Eight species and subspecies of Dendrolimus, D. punctatus punctatus (Walker)，D. punctatus tehchangensis Tsai et Liu，D. Punctatus wenshanensis Tsai et Liu，D. kikuchiI Matsumura，D. spectabilis Butler，D. tabulaeformis Tsai et Liu，D. superans (Butler)，and D. houi Lajonquiere have been the most serious and economically damaging insect pests in Chinese pine forests in recent years. Twenty 10-oligonucliotide primers were initially screened. We used 13 primers, which produced 168 polymorphic molecular markers to analyze the phylogenetic relationship of the eight taxa of Dendrolimus in China. The pair-wise Nei's genetic distances (Nei's D) were estimated for the eight taxa of Dendrolimus. The pairwise Nei's D varied in the range of 0.3780－0.7360. D. p. tehchangensis Tsai et Liu, and D. p. wenshanensis Tsai et Liu，which are two subspecies of D. punctatus traditionally, have nearer genetic distances with D. p. punctatus. The detailed phylogenetic relationship among the eight species and subspecies of Dendrolimus based on UPGMA should be as the following: (D. superans (D.tabulaeformis (D. wenshanensis (D. tehchangensis, D. punctatus)(D. kikuchii (D. spectabilis, D. houi)).

Key words: Pine caterpillars, Dendrolimus, phylogenetic relationship, DNA fingerprinting