Abstract
BackgroundAlthough most taxonomists agree that species are independently evolving metapopulation lineages that should be delimited with several kinds of data, the taxonomic practice in Malagasy primates (Lemuriformes) looks quite different. Several recently described lemur species are based solely on evidence of genetic distance and diagnostic characters of mitochondrial DNA sequences sampled from a few individuals per location. Here we explore the validity of this procedure for species delimitation in lemurs using published sequence data.ResultsWe show that genetic distance estimates and Population Aggregation Analysis (PAA) are inappropriate for species delimitation in this group of primates. Intra- and interspecific genetic distances overlapped in 14 of 17 cases independent of the genetic marker used. A simulation of a fictive taxonomic study indicated that for the mitochondrial D-loop the minimum required number of individuals sampled per location is 10 in order to avoid false positives via PAA.ConclusionsGenetic distances estimates and PAA alone should not be used for species delimitation in lemurs. Instead, several nuclear and sex-specific loci should be considered and combined with other data sets from morphology, ecology or behavior. Independent of the data source, sampling should be done in a way to ensure a quantitative comparison of intra- and interspecific variation of the taxa in question. The results of our study also indicate that several of the recently described lemur species should be reevaluated with additional data and that the number of good species among the currently known taxa is probably lower than currently assumed.
Highlights
Most taxonomists agree that species are independently evolving metapopulation lineages that should be delimited with several kinds of data, the taxonomic practice in Malagasy primates (Lemuriformes) looks quite different
Adopting a concept of species as population level lineages will not solve the problems related to species delimitation in practice, but there would no longer be a discussion of the species concept [1]
The concept of species and the question how we recognize a species in practice are encapsulated [12], which means that no single property is necessary to be considered crucial, as is reproductive isolation for the Biological Species Concept (BSC) or a phylogenetically distinct cluster for the Phylogenetic Species Concept (PSC), because every single criterion is likely to fail or to yield ambiguous results [6,11,13]
Summary
Most taxonomists agree that species are independently evolving metapopulation lineages that should be delimited with several kinds of data, the taxonomic practice in Malagasy primates (Lemuriformes) looks quite different. Species are the fundamental units of evolutionary biology as they define the entities that are studied and compared in every field of biology [1]. They are the currency for biodiversity classification of geographic regions, and are used to define regions of conservation priority, so-called biological hotspots [2,3]. Morphological and molecular approaches are mutually informative [20] and often feasible
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