Formal nomenclature and description of cryptic species of the Encyrtus sasakii complex (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae)

Abstract

With the recent development of molecular approaches to species delimitation, a growing number of cryptic species have been discovered in what had previously been thought to be single morpho-species. Molecular methods, such as DNA barcoding, have greatly enhanced our knowledge of taxonomy, but taxonomy remains incomplete and needs a formal species nomenclature and description to facilitate its use in other scientific fields. A previous study using DNA barcoding, geometric morphometrics and mating tests revealed at least two cryptic species in the Encyrtus sasakii complex. (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae). To describe these two new species formally (Encyrtus eulecaniumiae sp. nov. and Encyrtus rhodococcusiae sp. nov.), a detailed morphometric study of Encyrtus spp. was performed in addition to the molecular analysis and evaluation of biological data. Morphometric analyses, a multivariate ratio analysis (MRA) and a geometric morphometric analysis (GMA) revealed a great number of differences between the species, but reliable characteristics were not observed for diagnosing the cryptic species. We thus diagnosed these three Encyrtus species on the basis of the characteristics that resulted from genetic markers (mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and nuclear 28S rRNA) and biological data. A formal nomenclature and description of cryptic species was provided on the basis of an integrated taxonomy.

Genome-informed integrative taxonomic description of three cryptic species in the earthworm genus Carpetania (Oligochaeta, Hormogastridae)

“…1), finding congruent support for three species-level genetic clusters (hereafter cluster A, B and C), which comprised one or more of the six previously identified lineages as described in Daniel F. Marchán et al, (2017). The well-supported putative species identified in Carpetania demanded a full, detailed taxonomic description: several authors have stressed the necessity of going a step further from cryptic species identification (Jörger & Schrödl, 2013;Wang et al, 2016). To this end, this work will build upon the framework provided by Marchán et al (submitted), with the following objectives: i) identify genomewide nucleotidic positions to be used as diagnostic characters in species description (molecular taxonomy); ii) explore further morphometric and internal anatomic characters to reinforce species description; iii) formally describe the species within Carpetania; iv) compare genomic and barcode genetic distances to validate the widespread use of the latter.…”

DeSignate: detecting signature characters in gene sequence alignments for taxon diagnoses

“…Consider the noisy candidate characters at positions 8,19,20, and 23 in Fig. 1 and a k-window of size k = 5.…”

“…In the character-based approach, each position of an alignment represents a molecular character which may adopt different states in gene sequence data (e.g., nucleotides and deletions). Diagnostic molecular characters are included in taxon diagnoses (e.g., of protists [5] or animals [1,[6][7][8]). However, data from (potentially) related taxa for comparison with the type species are often lacking or difficult to obtain [9].…”

Host specificity of parasitoids (Encyrtidae) toward armored scale insects (Diaspididae): Untangling the effect of cryptic species on quantitative food webs

“…For Diaspididae, COI sequences were obtained using the primer pairs reported in Morse and Normark (2006) and the 28S sequences (D2 and D3 regions) were obtained using primer 28S-F3633 and 28S-b (Rugman-Jones, Hoddle, & Stouthamer, 2010;Whiting, Carpenter, Wheeler, & Wheeler, 1997). The protocols for PCR followed Wang et al (2016). PCR products were sequenced using ABI technology.…”