How to fail at species delimitation.
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TLDR
Researchers should apply a wide range of species delimitation analyses to their data and place their trust in delimitations that are congruent across methods, for in most contexts it is better to fail to delimit species than it is to falsely delimit entities that do not represent actual evolutionary lineages.Abstract:
Species delimitation is the act of identifying species-level biological diversity. In recent years, the field has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of methods available for delimiting species. However, most recent investigations only utilize a handful (i.e. 2–3) of the available methods, often for unstated reasons. Because the parameter space that is potentially relevant to species delimitation far exceeds the parameterization of any existing method, a given method necessarily makes a number of simplifying assumptions, any one of which could be violated in a particular system. We suggest that researchers should apply a wide range of species delimitation analyses to their data and place their trust in delimitations that are congruent across methods. Incongruence across the results from different methods is evidence of either a difference in the power to detect cryptic lineages across one or more of the approaches used to delimit species and could indicate that assumptions of one or more of the methods have been violated. In either case, the inferences drawn from species delimitation studies should be conservative, for in most contexts it is better to fail to delimit species than it is to falsely delimit entities that do not represent actual evolutionary lineages.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Measuring evolutionary independence: A pragmatic approach to species classification
TL;DR: Whether this problem can be resolved by developing a unitary scale for evolutionary independence is considered, which would show clearly when groups are comparable and allow taxonomists to choose a conventional threshold of independence for species status.
Posted ContentDOI
Bridging multilocus species delimitation and DNA barcoding through target enrichment of UCEs: A case study with Mexican highland frogs
Eugenia Zarza,Elizabeth M. Connors,James M. Maley,Whitney L. E. Tsai,Peter Heimes,Moises Kaplan,John E. McCormack +6 more
TL;DR: This study demonstrates not only that UCEs can be used as effective genomic DNA barcodes, but that combining multilocus genomic data with mtDNA is a powerful approach for both delimiting species and identifying them in poorly described and phenotypically challenging groups.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Revision of Philander (Marsupialia: Didelphidae), Part 2: Phylogenetic Relationships and Morphological Diagnosis of P. nigratus Thomas, 1923
Robert S. Voss,Thomas C. Giarla +1 more
TL;DR: Newly available molecular sequences and morphological data suggest that Philander nigratus Thomas, 1923, is a valid species.
Journal ArticleDOI
Multilocus species-delimitation in the Xerotyphlops vermicularis (Reptilia: Typhlopidae) species complex.
Panagiotis Kornilios,Daniel Jablonski,R.A. Sadek,Yusuf Kumlutaş,Kurtuluş Olgun,Aziz Avcı,Çetin Ilgaz +6 more
TL;DR: Previous work that relied heavily on mitochondrial markers is extended, following a multi-locus approach and applying several species-delimitation methods, including a Bayesian coalescence-based approach (STACEY).
Journal ArticleDOI
King or royal family? Testing for species boundaries in the King Cobra, Ophiophagus hannah (Cantor, 1836), using morphology and multilocus DNA analyses.
P. Gowri Shankar,Priyanka Swamy,Rhiannon Carys Williams,S.R. Ganesh,Matt Moss,Jacob Höglund,Indraneil Das,Gunanidhi Sahoo,S. P. Vijayakumar,Kartik Shanker,Wolfgang Wüster,Sushil K. Dutta +11 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors tested for species boundaries in one such widespread species, the king cobra, Ophiophagus hannah (Cantor, 1836), a largely tropical elapid snake distributed across the Oriental realm.
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