Integrative species delimitation in photosynthetic sea slugs reveals twenty candidate species in three nominal taxa studied for drug discovery, plastid symbiosis or biological control.

ABSTRACT: DNA barcoding can highlight taxa in which conventional taxonomy underestimates species richness, identifying mitochondrial lineages that may correspond to unrecognized species. However, key assumptions of barcoding remain untested for many groups of soft-bodied marine invertebrates with poorly resolved taxonomy. Here, we applied an integrative approach for species delimitation to herbivorous sea slugs in clade Sacoglossa, in which unrecognized diversity may complicate studies of drug discovery, plastid endosymbiosis, and biological control. Using the mitochondrial barcoding COI gene and the nuclear histone 3 gene, we tested the hypothesis that three widely distributed "species" each comprised a complex of independently evolving lineages. Morphological and reproductive characters were then

SUBMITTER: Krug PJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3788053 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature