Additional lines of evidence provide new insights into species diversity of the Paphia subgenus Protapes (Mollusca, Biva
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Additional lines of evidence provide new insights into species diversity of the Paphia subgenus Protapes (Mollusca, Bivalvia, Veneridae) in seas of south China Jun Chen & Qi Li & Lingfeng Kong & Xue Yu
Received: 14 May 2013 / Revised: 8 September 2013 / Accepted: 10 September 2013 / Published online: 28 September 2013 # Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract DNA barcoding has shown high efficiency in taxonomy disentanglement. However, barcode clusters do not necessarily reflect independent biological species. Herein, Protapes clams in seas of the south China were used as a case study to illustrate how additional lines of evidences confirm the species status of cryptic species uncovered in barcoding studies. Species boundaries within Protapes were delimited iteratively using six gene fragments under both distance-based and phylogeny-based approaches. Our results showed that species candidates within Paphia (Protapes) gallus complex are independent biological species, and two hidden species also exist within P. (P.) sinuosa . Our results double the number of species of Protapes in the western Pacific, suggesting its biodiversity in this region might be severely underestimated. The present study shows that combining DNA barcoding with subsequent multiple-line analyses is effective in species-level biodiversity exploration. Keywords DNA Barcoding . Cryptic species . Biodiversity exploration . Multiple lines of evidence . Evolutionary relationship . Protapes
Introduction Alpha taxonomy remains mainly based on morphological characters (Lefébure et al. 2006), although it is known that this can lead to underestimation or overestimation of biodiversity. J. Chen : Q. Li (*) : L. Kong : X. Yu Fisheries College, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China e-mail: [email protected] J. Chen Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Linyi University, Linyi 276000, China
Molecular methods have shown high effectiveness in the construction of phylogenetic relationships as well as the resolution of species-level taxonomic problems. Some applications have been proposed for DNA barcoding, such as species identification (Zhang and Hanner 2011), cryptic species discovery (Hebert et al. 2003), taxonomy disentanglement (Chen et al. 2011a), and biodiversity assessment (Smith et al. 2005). However, one of the criticisms of DNA barcoding is that cytochrome oxidase I gene (COI)-based barcode clusters do not necessarily reflect independent biological species (Meyer and Paulay 2005). In order to accurately examine species boundaries, more lines of evidence should be applied when potential synonymous or cryptic diversity are revealed in barcoding analyses. Two potential species were revealed within the morphospecies Paphia (Protapes) gallus (Chen et al. 2011a). In the present study, species of the subgenus Protapes in seas of the south China were used as a case study to illustrate how additional lines of evidence confirm the species status of cryptic species. Based on th
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