AI Article Synopsis
- Mitochondrial DNA is increasingly used for identifying species boundaries, but there's debate over its effectiveness, especially in insects affected by intracellular bacteria.
- A study examined the nuclear genome divergence among 92 insect species-like units, finding that nuclear divergence was consistently below 2%.
- These findings suggest that while mitochondrial gene flow may occur, it is infrequent enough in insects to support the reliability of DNA barcoding for species identification.
Article Abstract
Promoted by the barcoding approach, mitochondrial DNA is more than ever used as a molecular marker to identify species boundaries. Yet, it has been repeatedly argued that it may be poorly suited for this purpose, especially in insects where mitochondria are often associated with invasive intracellular bacteria that may promote their introgression. Here, we inform this debate by assessing how divergent nuclear genomes can be when mitochondrial barcodes indicate very high proximity. To this end, we obtained RAD-seq data from 92 barcode-based species-like units (operational taxonomic units [OTUs]) spanning four insect orders. In 100% of the cases, the observed median nuclear divergence was lower than 2%, a value that was recently estimated as one below which nuclear gene flow is not uncommon. These results suggest that although mitochondria may occasionally leak between species, this process is rare enough in insects to make DNA barcoding a reliable tool for clustering specimens into species-like units.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13178 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!