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      Integrative taxonomy on the fast track - towards more sustainability in biodiversity research

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          Abstract

          Background

          A so called “taxonomic impediment” has been recognized as a major obstacle to biodiversity research for the past two decades. Numerous remedies were then proposed. However, neither significant progress in terms of formal species descriptions, nor a minimum standard for descriptions have been achieved so far. Here, we analyze the problems of traditional taxonomy which often produces keys and descriptions of limited practical value. We suggest that phylogenetics and phenetics had a subtle and so far unnoticed effect on taxonomy leading to inflated species descriptions.

          Discussion

          The term “turbo-taxonomy” was recently coined for an approach combining cox1 sequences, concise morphological descriptions by an expert taxonomist, and high-resolution digital imaging to streamline the formal description of larger numbers of new species. We propose a further development of this approach which, together with open access web-publication and automated pushing of content from journal into a wiki, may create the most efficient and sustainable way to conduct taxonomy in the future. On demand, highly concise descriptions can be gradually updated or modified in the fully versioned wiki-framework we use. This means that the visibility of additional data is not compromised, while the original species description -the first version- remains preserved in the wiki, and of course in the journal version. A DNA sequence database with an identification engine replaces an identification key, helps to avoid synonyms and has the potential to detect grossly incorrect generic placements. We demonstrate the functionality of a species-description pipeline by naming 101 new species of hyperdiverse New Guinea Trigonopterus weevils in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

          Summary

          Fast track taxonomy will not only increase speed, but also sustainability of global species inventories. It will be of great practical value to all the other disciplines that depend on a usable taxonomy and will change our perception of global biodiversity. While this approach is certainly not suitable for all taxa alike, it is the tool that will help to tackle many hyperdiverse groups and pave the road for more sustainable comparative studies, e.g. in community ecology, phylogeography and large scale biogeographic studies.

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          Most cited references27

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          What we know and don't know about Earth's missing biodiversity.

          Estimates of non-microbial diversity on Earth range from 2 million to over 50 million species, with great uncertainties in numbers of insects, fungi, nematodes, and deep-sea organisms. We summarize estimates for major taxa, the methods used to obtain them, and prospects for further discoveries. Major challenges include frequent synonymy, the difficulty of discriminating certain species by morphology alone, and the fact that many undiscovered species are small, difficult to find, or have small geographic ranges. Cryptic species could be numerous in some taxa. Novel techniques, such as DNA barcoding, new databases, and crowd-sourcing, could greatly accelerate the rate of species discovery. Such advances are timely. Most missing species probably live in biodiversity hotspots, where habitat destruction is rife, and so current estimates of extinction rates from known species are too low. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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            DNA barcodes for 1/1000 of the animal kingdom

            This study reports DNA barcodes for more than 1300 Lepidoptera species from the eastern half of North America, establishing that 99.3 per cent of these species possess diagnostic barcode sequences. Intraspecific divergences averaged just 0.43 per cent among this assemblage, but most values were lower. The mean was elevated by deep barcode divergences (greater than 2%) in 5.1 per cent of the species, often involving the sympatric occurrence of two barcode clusters. A few of these cases have been analysed in detail, revealing species overlooked by the current taxonomic system. This study also provided a large-scale test of the extent of regional divergence in barcode sequences, indicating that geographical differentiation in the Lepidoptera of eastern North America is small, even when comparisons involve populations as much as 2800 km apart. The present results affirm that a highly effective system for the identification of Lepidoptera in this region can be built with few records per species because of the limited intra-specific variation. As most terrestrial and marine taxa are likely to possess a similar pattern of population structure, an effective DNA-based identification system can be developed with modest effort.
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              Dispersal and gene flow in free-living marine nematodes

              Dispersal and gene flow determine connectivity among populations, and can be studied through population genetics and phylogeography. We here review the results of such a framework for free-living marine nematodes. Although field experiments have illustrated substantial dispersal in nematodes at ecological time scales, analysis of the genetic diversity illustrated the importance of priority effects, founder effects and genetic bottlenecks for population structuring between patches <1 km apart. In contrast, only little genetic structuring was observed within an estuary (<50 km), indicating that these small scale fluctuations in genetic differentiation are stabilized over deeper time scales through extensive gene flow. Interestingly, nematode species with contrasting life histories (extreme colonizers vs persisters) or with different habitat preferences (algae vs sediment) show similar, low genetic structuring. Finally, historical events have shaped the genetic pattern of marine nematodes and show that gene flow is restricted at large geographical scales. We also discuss the presence of substantial cryptic diversity in marine nematodes, and end with highlighting future important steps to further unravel nematode evolution and diversity.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Front Zool
                Front. Zool
                Frontiers in Zoology
                BioMed Central
                1742-9994
                2013
                27 March 2013
                : 10
                : 15
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe (SMNK), Erbprinzenstr, Karlsruhe, 13, D-76133, Germany
                [2 ]Papua New Guinea Institute for Biological Research (PNG-IBR), Goroka, Papua New Guinea
                [3 ]Zoological Museum, Cibinong Science Center - LIPI, Jl. Raya, Jakarta- Bogor, Indonesia
                [4 ]Zoological State Collection, Münchhausenstr, Munich, 21, D-81247, Germany
                [5 ]GeoBioCenter, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany
                Article
                1742-9994-10-15
                10.1186/1742-9994-10-15
                3626550
                23537182
                74824a1a-dc1a-423e-b473-fa22ca741224
                Copyright ©2013 Riedel et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 22 October 2012
                : 28 February 2013
                Categories
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                Animal science & Zoology
                taxonomic impediment,integrative taxonomy,dna barcoding,taxonomic description

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