Detecting Cryptic Species Using Allozyme Data

Abstract

One of the important discoveries resulting from the application of molecular methods to systematics is the presence of far more species in many groups of organisms than have been identified by classical morphological studies. This finding has been especially significant in amphibian systematics because speciation in this group often has not been accompanied by the evolution of morphological novelties (Highton, 1995;Larson, 1984;Wake, 1981). Some biologists doing molecular studies on vertebrates are not systematists and may not wish to become involved in the descriptions of new species or in surveying the literature to look for available names for the unrecognized species they discover. Some workers apparently are not even aware that their data indicate the presence of cryptic species in the groups they study. The result is that there are now a considerable number of species that are not named and whose existence is unknown to most of the scientific community. This may be an unfortunate consequence of the neglect of systematics training in many biology undergraduate and graduate programs during the last half of the 20th century. To remedy this situation, there are simple methods available which are useful in detecting undescribed species from allozyme and other molecular data sets.