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posted 24. October 2004 14:29
PLoS Biology, Volume 2, Issue 10 October 2004
Identification of Birds through DNA Barcodes
Paul D. N. Hebert, Mark Y. Stoeckle, Tyler S. Zemlak, Charles M. Francis
Short DNA sequences from a standardized region of the genome provide a DNA barcode for identifying species. Compiling a public library of DNA barcodes linked to named specimens could provide a new master key for identifying species, one whose power will rise with increased taxon coverage and with faster, cheaper sequencing. Recent work suggests that sequence diversity in a 648-bp region of the mitochondrial gene, cytochrome c oxidase I (COI), might serve as a DNA barcode for the identification of animal species. This study tested the effectiveness of a COI barcode in discriminating bird species, one of the largest and best-studied vertebrate groups. We determined COI barcodes for 260 species of North American birds and found that distinguishing species was generally straightforward. All species had a different COI barcode(s), and the differences between closely related species were, on average, 18 times higher than the differences within species. Our results identified four probable new species of North American birds, suggesting that a global survey will lead to the recognition of many additional bird species. The finding of large COI sequence differences between, as compared to small differences within, species confirms the effectiveness of COI barcodes for the identification of bird species. This result plus those from other groups of animals imply that a standard screening threshold of sequence difference (10× average intraspecific difference) could speed the discovery of new animal species. The growing evidence for the effectiveness of DNA barcodes as a basis for species identification supports an international exercise that has recently begun to assemble a comprehensive library of COI sequences linked to named specimens.
Received February 13, 2004; Accepted July 20, 2004; Published September 28, 2004
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020312
Copyright: © 2004 Hebert et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abbreviations: COI, cytochrome c oxidase I; K2P, Kimura-2 parameter; mtDNA, mitochondrial DNA; NJ, neighbor joining
Academic Editor: Charles Godfray, Imperial College, Silwood Park
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: phebert@uoguelph.ca
Citation: Hebert PDN, Stoeckle MY, Zemlak TS, Francis CM (2004) Identification of Birds through DNA Barcodes. PLoS Biol 2(10): e312.
From the discussion:
Discussion
The simplest test of species identification by DNA barcode is whether any sequences are found in two species; none was in this study. Although sequences were not shared by species, sequence variation did occur in some species. Thus the second test is whether the differences within species are much less than those among species. In this study we found that COI differences among most of the 260 North American bird species far exceeded those within species.
See Full Article at PLoS Biology
[ 03. December 2004, 21:00: Message edited by: ISCID News Editor ]
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