Mitochondrial heteroplasmy and DNA barcoding in Hawaiian Hylaeus (Nesoprosopis) bees (Hymenoptera: Colletidae).

ABSTRACT:

Background

The past several years have seen a flurry of papers seeking to clarify the utility and limits of DNA barcoding, particularly in areas such as species discovery and paralogy due to nuclear pseudogenes. Heteroplasmy, the coexistence of multiple mitochondrial haplotypes in a single organism, has been cited as a potentially serious problem for DNA barcoding but its effect on identification accuracy has not been tested. In addition, few studies of barcoding have tested a large group of closely-related species with a well-established morphological taxonomy. In this study we examine both of these issues, by densely sampling the Hawaiian Hylaeus bee radiation.

Results

Individuals from 21 of the 49 a priori morphologically-defined species exhibited coding sequence heteropl

SUBMITTER: Magnacca KN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2891727 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature