Abstract
The Southeast Pacific comprises two Large Marine Ecosystems, the Pacific Central-American Coastal and the Humboldt Current System; and is one of the less well known in the tropical subregions in terms of biodiversity. To address this, we compared DNA barcoding repositories with the marine biodiversity species for the Southeast Pacific. We obtained a checklist of marine species in the Southeast Pacific (i.e. Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, and Peru) from the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) database and compared it with species available at the Barcoding of Life Data System (BOLD) repository. Of the 5504 species records retrieved from OBIS, 42% of them had at least one registered specimen in BOLD (including specimens around the world); however, only 4.5% of records corresponded to publicly available DNA barcodes including specimens collected from a Southeast Pacific country. The low representation of barcoded species does not vary much across the different taxonomic groups or within countries, but we observed an asymmetric distribution of DNA barcoding records for taxonomic groups along the coast, being more abundant for the Humboldt Current System than the Pacific Central-American Coastal. We observed high-level of barcode records with Barcode Index Number (BIN) incongruences, particularly for fishes (Actinopterygii = 30.27% and Elasmobranchii = 24.71%), reflecting taxonomic uncertainties for fishes, whereas for Invertebrates and Mammalia more than 85% of records were classified as data deficient or inadequate procedure for DNA barcoding. DNA barcoding is a powerful tool to study biodiversity, with a great potential to increase the knowledge of the Southeast Pacific marine biodiversity. Our results highlight the critical need for increasing taxonomic sampling effort, the number of trained taxonomic specialists, laboratory facilities, scientific collections, and genetic reference libraries.
Highlights
The knowledge about the dimension of marine biodiversity remains elusive, with projected estimates of species richness varying from nearly 300 thousand [1] to over a million [2,3] or even 10 millions of species [4]
The aim of this study was to evaluate the advance of the DNA barcoding in the Southeast Pacific (SEP) region, i.e. What is the coverage of barcoded species from SEP? Are there differences between taxonomic groups or geographic areas? And, what is the degree of taxonomic uncertainty revealed by the DNA barcoding data? To answer these questions, we reviewed the reports of marine species deposited in the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) and compared them with the genetic data available in the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD), to provide a taxonomic and geographic overview of the progress made in DNA barcoding the SEP marine biodiversity
During 2019, a checklist of all marine species reported in the SEP region (i.e. Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile) was obtained from Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) database [20] and compared with the Barcoding of Life Data System (BOLD) database [21] to obtain a list of species with DNA barcodes, geographic information and Barcode Index Number (BIN) data
Summary
The knowledge about the dimension of marine biodiversity remains elusive, with projected estimates of species richness varying from nearly 300 thousand [1] to over a million [2,3] or even 10 millions of species [4]. Conservative estimates for marine species that remain undescribed are between 33% to 66% [2] This situation is no different from that of the marine biodiversity from the Southeast Pacific (SEP), one of least well-known region in the tropics [5]. This region comprises two Large Marine Ecosystems [6]: part of the Pacific Central-American Coastal encompassing the coast of Colombia, Ecuador, and the extreme north of Peru and the Humboldt Current System including the coasts of Peru and Chile. The Pacific Central-American Coastal biota is considered as highly endemic, while the Humboldt Current System has high species richness and endemism [5,7]. There is an undeniable urgency to conserve marine species and ecosystems which are under threat mostly by overexploitation and habitat loss and degradation [8], but without a better understanding of the current marine diversity, the extinction of species will pass under detected
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