The importance of biobanking in molecular taxonomy, with proposed definitions for vouchers in a molecular context

DNA barcoding and molecular or integrative taxonomy projects are among the most valuable sources for biobank specimens of wild organisms, thanks to – among other aspects – the high level of specimen diversity and thanks to a thorough taxonomic coverage. Specimens used to build barcoding reference libraries tend to be accompanied by deeper and higher-quality data than samples from many other sources, as they are often contributed by taxonomists, and identifications are cross-checked through barcode analysis. Vouchering of morphological specimens in natural history collections is a prerequisite for proper barcoding, which is advantageous for biobanking as well, as biobank samples should always be linked to specimen vouchers. As a further added value, barcoding provides an inherent, molecular species ID tag to the processed biobank sample. Banked barcoding samples can greatly catalyze taxonomy, as well as many other fields of application, such as the emerging large genome sequencing projects that are constantly increasing the demand for well-preserved samples from a multitude of different species (see Wong et al. 2012). Considered from the opposite perspective of the synergy, barcoding can benefit greatly from biobanking as well. Biobanking enables the expansion of barcoding datasets with biobanked samples from other projects. It also offers the possibility to add new barcoding markers any time in the future, e.g. scaling up to ‘next-generation barcoding’ (e.g. Taylor ZooKeys 365: 67–70 (2013)