DNA Barcoding in Plants of Monte Desert, Argentina

SOUTO, C. P.; M. TADEY

Guelph

Conferencia; 6th International Barcode of Life Conference; 2015

Biodiversityconservation is an actual challenge given the increasing habitat lossdue to human activities that are causing extintion, local extintionor reduction of species populations. Preserving species evolutionarypotential (i. e. the genetic variability) is important because allowsthem to respond to changing environments and ensure populationspersistence. DNAbarcoding to determine variation in species attributable toevolutionary history and the assessments of floristic surveys fromgeographic areas can enhance the development of regional barcodinglibraries, providing vital data for community phylogeny construction,studies in ecology and conservation biology. MonteDesert occupies a vast area of Argentina and its being threatened byhuman land use. This study aims to investigate the utility andspecies resolution of DNA barcoding in the vegetation of MonteDesert. Weused a phylogenetic method (neighbour-joining trees) ofDNA barcodes rbcLaand ITS2to gain a betterunderstanding of regional barcode variation.ResultsWeanalysed 75 species from 400 samples collected throughout Montedistribution. DNAbarcodes were obtained for 190 specimens/61 species. We obtained 48specimens/ 27 species: 22 genus: 13 families for ITS2and 76 specimens/36 species: 29 genus: 17 families for rbcLa. Barcodeanalysis showed a mean within species divergence of 10.84± 0.74% and 10.32± 0.8% ; 16.32 ±0.64% and 10.32 ±0.6%within genus; 24.99 ±0.17 and 11.2 ±0.2within families (ITS2and rbcLa, repectively).The mean intra-specific divergence was 9.07 ±1.12 and1.66 ±0.19and the mean speciesdivergence fromthe nearest neighbour was 15.15 ±0.43and 1.93 ±0.07(ITS2 and rbcLa, repectively).SignificanceTheseresults provided a better understanding of regional variation inbarcode sequences Monte Deser, Argentina. Thisstudy expand the global DNA barcode database for desert plants andcontributes to the knowledge of the application of barcoding tobiogeography conservation in plants.