DNA barcoding of shared fish species from the North Atlantic and Australasia: minimal divergence for most taxa, but Zeus faber and Lepidopus caudatus each probably constitute two species

Abstract

Fifteen fish species, totalling 149 specimens, were cytochrome c oxidase I sequencedbarcoded -from Northern (Atlantic and Mediterranean) and Southern (Australasian) Hemisphere waters. Thirteen species showed no significant evidence of spatial genetic differentiation for this gene, although small sample sizes reduced statistical power. For marine fish, barcodes collected in one part of a species range are likely to be useful as identifiers in all other parts of its range. Two species did show striking north-south differentiation, with F ST values of 0.84 and 0.96 (both p << 0.001). One of these, the silver scabbardfish Lepidopus caudatus, showed 2.75% genetic distance between northern and southern clades. The other, John dory Zeus faber, showed 7.44% differentiation between northern and southern clades. All specimens of these 2 species fell correctly into the northern or southern clade. We suggest that both taxa conceal a currently unrecognised, cryptic species, and recommend further taxonomic and genetic investigation.

DNA barcoding analysis of fish species diversity in four north Greek lakes

“…Until now, only one-quarter of these have been barcoded. Most of them concern marine fish of Australia and Asia (Ward et al 2005(Ward et al , 2008aWard and Holmes 2007;Zemlak et al 2009), whereas in Europe 440 out of 2028 species have been barcoded until now (7 November 2010). DNA barcoding results have shown that their use is highly successful in fish and that genetic identification methods discriminate 98 and 93% of marine and freshwater fish, respectively ).…”

Comparative analysis of the mitochondrial cytochromecoxidase subunit I (COI) gene in ciliates (Alveolata, Ciliophora) and evaluation of its suitability as a biodiversity marker

“…COI, however, is one of the most conserved mitochondrial protein-coding genes in animals (Mueller, 2006), and thus displays a better phylogenetic signal (Hebert et al, 2003b). COI as a barcoding marker has been used very successfully in many animal taxa (Hebert et al, 2003a(Hebert et al, , 2003bRemigio & Hebert, 2003;Hebert et al, 2004aHebert et al, , 2004bHogg & Hebert, 2004;Ball et al, 2005;Smith et al, 2005;Ward et al, 2005;Hajibabaei et al, 2006;Clare et al, 2007;Kerr et al, 2007;Hubert et al, 2008;Moura et al, 2008;Rach et al, 2008;Smith et al, 2008;Ward et al, 2008). The suitability for other organisms and protists, in particular, has yet to be determined.…”

DNA Barcodes for Marine Biodiversity: Moving Fast Forward?

“…One of the early studies on barcoding marine life looked at 207 fish species from Australia and showed that all could be discriminated based on their COI sequence, including five species of Squalus previously described but not formally named [72]. Other studies found barcoding to be useful in identifying fishes from Pacific Canada [83], North Atlantic [84] or fish larvae from the Great Barrier Reef [55]. When including shared species between distant geographical areas, DNA barcodes could be useful to test the relationship between distance and intraspecific variation.…”