'Barcode fishing' for archival DNA from historical type material overcomes taxonomic hurdles, enabling the description of a new frog species.

ABSTRACT: Taxonomic progress is often hindered by intrinsic factors, such as morphologically cryptic species that require a broad suite of methods to distinguish, and extrinsic factors, such as uncertainties in the allocation of scientific names to species. These uncertainties can be due to a wide variety of factors, including old and poorly preserved type specimens (which contain only heavily degraded DNA or have lost important diagnostic characters), inappropriately chosen type specimens (e.g. juveniles without diagnostic characters) or poorly documented type specimens (with unprecise, incorrect, or missing locality data). Thanks to modern sequencing technologies it is now possible to overcome many such extrinsic factors by sequencing DNA from name-bearing type specimens of uncertain assignment an

SUBMITTER: Scherz MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7644772 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature