'Biodiversity' means the variety of life and it can be studied at different levels (genetic, species, ecosystem) and scales (spatial and temporal). Last decades showed that marine biodiversity has been severely underestimated at all levels. In order to investigate diversity patterns and underlying processes, there is a need to know what species live in the marine environment. An emerging tool for species identification, DNA barcoding can reliably assign unknown specimens to known species, also flagging potential cryptic species and genetically distant populations. This paper will review the role of DNA barcoding for the study of marine biodiversity at the species level.

Marine crustaceans are known as a group with a high level of morphological and ecological diversity but are difficult to identify by traditional approaches and usually require the help of highly trained taxonomists. A faster identification method, DNA barcoding, was found to be an effective tool for species identification in many metazoan groups including some crustaceans. Here we expand the DNA barcode database with a case study involving 80 malacostracan species from the Estuary and Gulf of St Lawrence. DNA sequences for 460 specimens grouped into clusters corresponding to known morphological species in 95% of cases. Genetic distances between species were on average 25 times higher than within species. Intraspecific divergence was high (3.78-13.6%) in specimens belonging to four morphological species, suggesting the occurrence of cryptic species. Moreover, we detected the presence of an invasive amphipod species in the St Lawrence Estuary. This study reconfirms the usefulness of DNA barcoding for the identification of marine crustaceans.

During the last years DNA barcoding has become a popular method of choice for molecular specimen identification. Here we present a comprehensive DNA barcode library of various crustacean taxa found in the North Sea, one of the most extensively studied marine regions of the world. Our data set includes 1,332 barcodes covering 205 species, including taxa of the Amphipoda, Copepoda, Decapoda, Isopoda, Thecostraca, and others. This dataset represents the most extensive DNA barcode library of the Crustacea in terms of species number to date. By using the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD), unique BINs were identified for 198 (96.6%) of the analyzed species. Six species were characterized by two BINs (2.9%), and three BINs were found for the amphipod species Gammarus salinus Spooner, 1947 (0.4%). Intraspecific distances with values higher than 2.2% were revealed for 13 species (6.3%). Exceptionally high distances of up to 14.87% between two distinct but monophyletic clusters were found for the parasitic copepod Caligus elongatus Nordmann, 1832, supporting the results of previous studies that indicated the existence of an overlooked sea louse species. In contrast to these high distances, haplotype-sharing was observed for two decapod spider crab species, Macropodia parva Van Noort & Adema, 1985 and Macropodia rostrata (Linnaeus, 1761), underlining the need for a taxonomic revision of both species. Summarizing the results, our study confirms the application of DNA barcodes as highly effective identification system for the analyzed marine crustaceans of the North Sea and represents an important milestone for modern biodiversity assessment studies using barcode sequences.

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The reliable taxonomic identification of organisms through DNA sequence data requires a well parameterized library of curated reference sequences. However, it is estimated that just 15% of described animal species are represented in public sequence repositories. To begin to address this deficiency, we provide DNA barcodes for 1,500,003 animal specimens collected from 23 terrestrial and aquatic ecozones at sites across Canada, a nation that comprises 7% of the planet’s land surface. In total, 14 phyla, 43 classes, 163 orders, 1123 families, 6186 genera, and 64,264 Barcode Index Numbers (BINs; a proxy for species) are represented. Species-level taxonomy was available for 38% of the specimens, but higher proportions were assigned to a genus (69.5%) and a family (99.9%). Voucher specimens and DNA extracts are archived at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics where they are available for further research. The corresponding sequence and taxonomic data can be accessed through the Barcode of Life Data System, GenBank, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, and the Global Genome Biodiversity Network Data Portal.