Barcoding Palearctic birds (1 Viewer)

DNA barcoding employs sequences from a short standardized gene region (cytochrome c oxidase I for animals) to identify species. The ability to discover cryptic species has also been explored, however, both utilities remain contentious. Birds remain an ideal group to test the efficacy of the barcode approach because of their mature taxonomy. COI diversity has been surveyed extensively in North American birds, but treatments elsewhere are sparse. In this study, we expand the COI library by sampling a large proportion of Palearctic birds. We acquired COI sequences from vouchered museum specimens (N=1674) representing 398 species and merged this data with that for North American birds. Avian diversity is low in this region, though a number of species are shared with or are sister to Nearctic taxa, which provides transcontinental comparisons. We tested different methods for species assignment including neighbour-joining clusters, distance-based thresholds, and character-based methods. We compare the results and reliability of these different tests. Well-supported divergences within species and their implications regarding species boundaries are discussed, as are reasons for low diversity between a limited number of species pairs.
http://www.birdmeetings.org/aou2009/files/aou2009-abstracts.pdf​