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Systematic Biology Advance Access originally published online on July 15, 2009
Systematic Biology 2009 58(4):439-442; doi:10.1093/sysbio/syp039
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© Society of Systematic Biologists

Can mtDNA Barcodes Be Used to Delimit Species? A Response to Pons et al. (2006)

Konrad Lohse*

Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK

* Correspondence to be sent to: Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK; E-mail: K.R.Lohse@sms.ed.ac.uk.

Received October 8, 2008; Revised February 25, 2009; Accepted June 9, 2009
The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The question of how DNA barcodes can and should be used in taxonomy has been debated for some time (Lipscomb et al. 2003; Tautz et al. 2003; Blaxter 2004; Vogler and Monaghan 2007; Wiens 2007). Although few doubt that they are a valuable molecular tool for matching unidentified specimens to described taxa, this has little to do with the question of whether barcodes can be used to delimit species in the first place. The most radical turn in this debate has been the plea for a DNA-based taxonomy (Tautz et al. 2003; Blaxter 2004; Pons et al. 2006; Vogler and Monaghan 2007). Its proponents argue that "the vast majority of sequence variation in nature is partitioned into clearly defined clusters" (Vogler and Monaghan 2007, p. 4), which " [...] broadly mirror the species category" (Papadopoulou et al. 2008, p. 1) and . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   MODELS AND METHODS
 

   RESULTS
 

   DISCUSSION
 

   FUNDING
 

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