Large geographic distance versus small DNA barcode divergence: Insights from a comparison of European to South Siberian Lepidoptera.

Peter Huemer,Konrad Fiedler,Brigitte Gottsberger,Paul D N Hebert,Markus Möst,Christian Wieser,Roman Yakovlev,Patrick Strutzenberger,Axel Hausmann,Marko Mutanen,Benjamin Wiesmair,Bernd Schierwater

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0206668

Abstract

Spanning nearly 13,000 km, the Palearctic region provides an opportunity to examine the level of geographic coverage required for a DNA barcode reference library to be effective in identifying species with broad ranges. This study examines barcode divergences between populations of 102 species of Lepidoptera from Europe and South Siberia, sites roughly 6,000 km apart. While three-quarters of these species showed divergence between their Asian and European populations, these divergence values ranged between 0–1%, distinctly less than the distance to the Nearest-Neighbor species in all but a few cases. Our results suggest that further taxonomic studies may be required for 16 species that showed either extremely low interspecific or high intraspecific variation. For example, seven species pairs showed low or no barcode divergence, but four of these cases are likely to reflect taxonomic over-splitting while the others involve species pairs that are either young or show evidence for introgression. Conversely, some of the nine species with deep intraspecific divergence at varied spatial levels may include overlooked species. Although these 16 cases require further investigation, our overall results indicate that barcode reference libraries based on records from one locality can be very effective in identifying specimens across an extensive geographic area.

Highlights

In many cases, DNA barcoding can be an effective tool for both specimen identification and species discovery
Whereas DNA barcode coverage for lepidopteran taxa is generally high for species from central and northern Europe, only few records are available from South Siberia
The species with a higher divergence than 2.5% showed a mean sequence divergence of 4.62% to European populations of 5,016 species of Lepidoptera. This result corroborates patterns from earlier studies on North American [6] and European Lepidoptera [4], confirming that the barcode region of c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) is an efficient tool for species identification, given that the databases are of high quality, even when the reference sequences used for species identification derive from sites far distant from the locality under study

Summary

Introduction

DNA barcoding can be an effective tool for both specimen identification and species discovery. A 648 base pair segment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) gene has been adopted as the barcode region [1], [2]. Large geographic distance and small DNA barcode divergence in Lepidoptera. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion