Abstract
DNA barcoding has transformed the fields of ecology, evolution, and conservation by providing a rapid and effective tool for species identification. The growth of DNA barcodes as a resource for biologists has followed advances in computational and sequencing technology that have enabled high-throughput barcoding applications. The global DNA barcode database is expanding to represent the diversity of species on Earth thanks to efforts by international consortia and expanding biological collections. Today, DNA barcoding is instrumental in advancing our understanding of how species evolve, how they interact, and how we can slow down their extirpation and extinction. This review focuses on current applications of DNA barcode sequences to address fundamental lines of research, as well as new and expanding applications of which DNA barcoding will play a central role.
Highlights
The fields of ecology, evolution, and conservation are being transformed by novel resources and techniques in the biological sciences
In nearly two decades since DNA barcodes were first proposed, a remarkable increase has taken place in the representation, use, and integration of DNA barcodes across the biological sciences
Sequence variation in traditional DNA barcodes is often insufficient for species-level discrimination in many large clades, the advances in computational and sequencing technology are changing the concept of DNA barcodes, from just a few loci to large, genome-scale sequences from organelles or genome-skim data
Summary
The fields of ecology, evolution, and conservation are being transformed by novel resources and techniques in the biological sciences. DNA barcoding, has realized its potential for the research community. Since the concept of DNA barcodes was first introduced in 2003 [1], tens of millions of barcode sequences have been made publicly available in reference databases for comparative research applications across the Tree of Life (Table 1). Recent reviews have highlighted the growth of DNA barcode applications for phylogenetics and taxonomy (e.g., [2]). Other overviews suggest that DNA barcoding is a resilient field that will continue to grow as sequence databases are enriched, throughput expands, and automation provides an ever-expanding user-community with increased accessibility to DNA barcodes, as reported by [3]. This review highlights the advances and applications in DNA barcode sequencing that have been leveraged for novel research in ecology, evolution, and conservation
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