DNA barcoding has become a promising means for identifying organisms of all life stages. Currently, phenetic approaches and tree-building methods have been used to define species boundaries and discover 'cryptic species'. However, a universal threshold of genetic distance values to distinguish taxonomic groups cannot be determined. As an alternative, DNA barcoding approaches can be 'character b...

Adult female of Araneus yoshitomii Yoshida 2014 has been described for the first time. The conspecific pair male and specimens was confirmed by DNA barcoding using mt-COI partial sequencing data.

most extensively analysed fungal sequences. As there are now barcode sequences covering all kingdoms of multicellular life, and taxonomists in museums are working hard to keep the molecular information connected to the traditional repositories and species definitions, barcodes offer the opportunity to expand species identification to situations where skilled taxonomists may not be at hand. “As ...

Internal Transcribed Spacer 2 (ITS2) is a popular DNA barcoding marker; however, in some animal species it is hypervariable and therefore difficult to sequence with traditional methods. With next-generation sequencing (NGS) it is possible to sequence all gene variants despite the presence of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), insertions/deletions (indels), homopolymeric regions, and micros...

A decade ago, DNA barcoding was proposed as a standardised method for identifying existing species and speeding the discovery of new species. Yet, despite its numerous successes across a range of taxa, its frequent failures have brought into question its accuracy as a short-cut taxonomic method. We use a retrospective approach, applying the method to the classification of New Zealand skinks as ...

Both the color patterns of the body and the structures of the male genitalia are important characters used in species identification of traditional taxonomy. However, these characters are often limiting when identifying females of some species. In this study, we attempted to evaluate the species reality of Asiopodabrus fragiliformis which often has difficulty in being identified due to individu...

It is likely that the mere use of the word barcode is responsible for much of the appeal surrounding DNA barcoding, after all DNA-based identification methods (e.g., DeSalle and Birstein, 1996) used prior to Hebert et al.'s (2002) proposal of the term failed to ignite significant attention from the scientific community and none whatsoever from the general public. The term itself is loaded. Prod...

We are engaged in a comprehensive study of cicada killers (Sphecius spp.), including their behavioral ecology. At one location, we observed interactions among three putative species of Sphecius, and used DNA barcoding to help clarify relationships among them. For this, we sequenced a fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene. During our study, a new taxonomic key of New ...

The unprecedented amount of data resulting from next-generation sequencing has opened a new era in phylogenetic estimation. Although large datasets should, in theory, increase phylogenetic resolution, massive, multilocus datasets have uncovered a great deal of phylogenetic incongruence among different genomic regions, due both to stochastic error and to the action of different evolutionary proc...