New metrics for comparison of taxonomies reveal striking discrepancies among species delimitation methods in Madascincus lizards.

ABSTRACT: Delimiting and describing species is fundamental to numerous biological disciplines such as evolution, macroecology, and conservation. Delimiting species as independent evolutionary lineages may and often does yield different outcomes depending on the species criteria applied, but methods should be chosen that minimize the inference of objectively erroneous species limits. Several protocols exploit single-gene or multi-gene coalescence statistics, assignment tests or other rationales related to nuclear DNA (nDNA) allele sharing to automatically delimit species. We apply seven different species delimitation protocols to a taxonomically confusing group of Malagasy lizards (Madascincus), and compare the resulting taxonomies with two newly developed metrics: the Taxonomic index of congruence C

SUBMITTER: Miralles A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3710018 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature