Barcoding birds of the Neotropics: patterns of divergence and comparisons with the Nearctic

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

Toronto, Canadá

Congreso; Canadian Barcode of Life Network Meeting (2008); 2008

Canadian Barcode of Life Network

DNA barcodes are short sequences from a standardized region of the mitochondrial genome (648 bp of the COI gene) used for species identification. Here, we describe the patterns of barcode variation in 1594 specimens belonging to 500 bird species from Argentina. Mean intraspecific distance (K2P) is 31-times lower than mean intrageneric distance (0.24% vs. 7.6%). All species can be separated in a neighbour-joining analysis, with the exception of two Muscisaxicola 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 genetic structure ( more than 1.5% sequence divergence), including taxa in the families Furnariidae, Tyrannidae, Thamnophilidae and Troglodytidae. Compared with North American birds, our study revealed similar levels of COI variation. In species that occur in both North America and Argentina, we found monophyletic clusters specific to each continent in 15 species (9 species with genetic difference greater than 2.0%, plus 6 additional species greater than 1.0%). In conclusion, our study reinforces the conclusion that DNA barcodes provide both a reliable tool for species identification and are a rapid indicator of interesting patterns of genetic variation.