Abstract
BackgroundCorrect identification and cryptic biodiversity revelation for marine organisms are pressing since the marine life is important in maintaining the balance of ecological system and is facing the problem of biodiversity crisis or food safety. DNA barcoding has been proved successful to provide resolution beyond the boundaries of morphological information. Nassarius, the common mudsnail, plays an important role in marine environment and has problem in food safety, but the classification of it is quite confused because of the complex morphological diversity.Methodology/Principal FindingsHere we report a comprehensive barcoding analysis of 22 Nassarius species. We integrated the mitochondrial and nuclear sequences and the morphological characters to determine 13 Nassarius species studied and reveal four cryptic species and one pair synonyms. Distance, monophyly, and character–based barcoding methods were employed.Conclusions/SignificanceSuch successful identification and unexpected cryptic discovery is significant for Nassarius in food safety and species conversation and remind us to pay more attention to the hidden cryptic biodiversity ignored in marine life. Distance, monophyly, and character–based barcoding methods are all very helpful in identification but the character-based method shows some advantages.
Highlights
It is pressing to catalogue the earth’s species since the world is facing a global biodiversity crisis [1,2]
N. sp and one individual of N. hepaticus (FJ660644) and N. sufflatus and N. dorsatus were lumped into one lineage respectively
All the individuals of N. festiva were separated into two different lineages (N. festiva I and N. festiva II) in COI and 16S rDNA phylogenetic trees
Summary
It is pressing to catalogue the earth’s species since the world is facing a global biodiversity crisis [1,2]. Correct species identification and revelation of cryptic species diversity for marine life is important to nature conversation, food safety and better understanding the patterns of ecosystem functioning. While the traditional taxonomy has been declining, DNA-based techniques, such as DNA barcoding [4], often provide resolution beyond the boundaries of morphological information [5]. A recently applied new technique, the character-based DNA barcode approach, characterizes species through a unique combination of diagnostic characters [18,23,24,25] and has been proved useful for species identification and discovery of cryptic species [15,23,24]. Correct identification and cryptic biodiversity revelation for marine organisms are pressing since the marine life is important in maintaining the balance of ecological system and is facing the problem of biodiversity crisis or food safety. The common mudsnail, plays an important role in marine environment and has problem in food safety, but the classification of it is quite confused because of the complex morphological diversity
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