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Systematic Biology 2008 57(5):809-813; doi:10.1080/10635150802406343
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© 2008 Society of Systematic Biologists

The Use of Mean Instead of Smallest Interspecific Distances Exaggerates the Size of the "Barcoding Gap" and Leads to Misidentification

Edited by Kelly Zamudio

Rudolf Meier1, Guanyang Zhang1,2 and Farhan Ali1

1 Department of Biological Sciences, University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543, Singapore; E-mail: dbsmr@nus.edu.sg (R.M.)
2 Department of Entomology, University of California Riverside Riverside, California 92521, USA

Received December 8, 2007; Revised March 21, 2008; Accepted May 7, 2008
The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

DNA barcoding is one of the best funded and most visible large-scale initiatives in systematic biology and has generated both much interest and controversy. DNA barcoding has also attracted significant support from foundations that had previously shown little interest in systematics. Yet, the project is controversial because many systematists feel that currently the conceptual foundation of DNA barcoding remains weak. This problem can only be alleviated through additional research that can lead to improved tools and concepts. Here, we scrutinize a key concept of DNA barcoding, the so-called barcoding gap (Meyer and Paulay, 2005), and use empirical data to document that it needs to be computed based on the smallest instead of the mean interspecific distances.

In the literature on DNA barcoding, the "barcoding gap" (Meyer and Paulay, 2005) refers to the separation between mean intra- and interspecific sequence variability for congeneric COI sequences. The barcoding . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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