DNA barcoding in birds from the neotropics.

KERR, KEVIN C. R.; LIJTMAER, DARÍO A.; BARREIRA, ANA S.; TUBARO, PABLO L.; HEBERT, PAUL D. N.

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Congreso; Evolution 2008; 2008

American Society of Naturalists, Society for the Study of Evolution, Society of Systemic Biologists

DNA barcodes are short sequences from a standardized region of themitochondrial genome (648 bp of the COI gene) used for speciesidentification. Here, we describe the patterns of barcode variation in1594 specimens belonging to 500 bird species from Argentina. Mean intraspecific distance (K2P) is 31-times lower than meanintrageneric distance (0.24% vs. 7.6%). All species can be separatedin a neighbour-joining analysis, with the exception of twoMuscisaxicola flycatchers, and six species of Sporophila seedeaters. A few pairs of taxa have similar barcodes, but are still diagnosable(e.g. Mimus dorsalis-M. triurus and Veniliornis frontalis-V.passerinus). By contrast, 21 other species exhibit deep geneticstructure ( more than 1.5% sequence divergence), including taxa in thefamilies Furnariidae, Tyrannidae, Thamnophilidae and Troglodytidae. Compared with North American birds, our study revealed similar levelsof COI variation. In species that occur in both North America andArgentina, we found monophyletic clusters specific to each continentin 15 species (9 species with genetic difference greater than 2.0%,plus 6 additional species greater than 1.0%). In conclusion, our studyreinforces the conclusion that DNA barcodes provide both a reliabletool for species identification and are a rapid indicator ofinteresting patterns of genetic variation.