Wedding biodiversity inventory of a large and complex Lepidoptera fauna with DNA barcoding.

ABSTRACT: By facilitating bioliteracy, DNA barcoding has the potential to improve the way the world relates to wild biodiversity. Here we describe the early stages of the use of cox1 barcoding to supplement and strengthen the taxonomic platform underpinning the inventory of thousands of sympatric species of caterpillars in tropical dry forest, cloud forest and rain forest in northwestern Costa Rica. The results show that barcoding a biologically complex biota unambiguously distinguishes among 97% of more than 1000 species of reared Lepidoptera. Those few species whose barcodes overlap are closely related and not confused with other species. Barcoding also has revealed a substantial number of cryptic species among morphologically defined species, associated sexes, and reinforced identification of spe

SUBMITTER: Janzen DH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1609230 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature