Barcoding Argentine Fishes: results, advances and future directions

DÍAZ DE ASTARLOA, J. M.; MABRAGAÑA E.

Buenos Aires

Workshop; Second Leading Labs Training Workshop: Extending and enhancing DNA Barcoding research in Argentina and neighboring countries; 2010

The DNA-Barcodes are short sequences of a standardized portion of the genome utilized as a complementary tool for traditional taxonomy to identification and discovered of new species. The Fish barcode of Life or FishBOL is an international initiative which main objective is to collect the DNA-barcodes of all fishes. In Argentina, 508 specimens from 114 marine fishes species have been sequenced. The analysis of sequence variability from 164 specimens of 31 chondrichthyan species permitted the discrimination of 93.5% of these species. Only two skates Psammobatis rudis and P. normani could not be separated; these could represent cases of hybridisation, recent speciation, misidentification or mislabelling. The average Kimura 2 parameter distance separating individuals within species was 0.195% and the average distance separating species within genera was 2.73%. The use of barcode confirmed the identification of a new species of skate (Dipturus argentinensis) for the Argentine Sea. Although many chondrichthyan species have not yet been codified, preliminary results suggest that COI barcoding can be used to identify shark and ray species with a very high degree of accuracy. Furthermore, allowing the identification of species from their products, barcoding can be very useful to the management and conservation of species subject to exploitation.