A DNA barcode library for ground beetles of Germany: the genus Agonum Bonelli, 1810 (Insecta, Coleoptera, Carabidae)

Abstract

The ground beetle genus Agonum Bonelli, 1810 is a large genus of the tribe Platynini with many species that show high amounts of intraspecific variations, making a correct identification challenging. As part of the German Barcode of Life initiative, this publication provides a comprehensive DNA barcode library for species of Agonum that are reported for Germany. In total, DNA barcodes from 258 beetles and 23 species were analysed using the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD) workbench, including sequences from former studies and 68 newly-generated sequences. The neighbour-joining analyses, based on K2P distances, revealed distinct clustering for all studied species, with unique Barcode Index Numbers (BINs) for 15 species (65%). BIN sharing but distinct clustering was found for three species pairs: Agonum micans/Agonum scitulum, Agonum impressum/Agonum sexpunctatum and Agonum duftschmidi/Agonum emarginatum. The given dataset and its analysis represent another important step in generating a comprehensive DNA barcode library for the ground beetles of Germany and Central Europe in terms of modern biodiversity research.

DNA barcode-based survey documents underestimated diversity and intricate phylogeographic patterns of aquatic Heteroptera in an endangered Balkan biodiversity hotspot: ancient Lake Skadar basin

“…Surprisingly, we did not detect BIN sharing between species, as reported in other studies regarding heteropterans (Havemann et al 2018;Raupach et al 2014) and other insect orders (i.e. Raupach et al 2020aRaupach et al , 2020bRewicz et al 2021).…”

DNA vs. Morphology in Delineating Species Boundaries of Endemic Mongolian Eodorcadion Taxa (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)

“…[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. However, there are some insect groups and situations where the use of this method may be seriously limited, e.g., hybridising species or maternally-inherited endosymbionts [16]. In Eodorcadion (as well as in other similarly distributed flightless beetle groups), some taxa are assumed to be by-products of hybridisation and introgression of previously independently evolving lineages.…”

The first molecular insight into the genus Turanium Baeckmann, 1922 (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Callidiini) with a description of a new species from Middle Asia

“…Although there are various situations when the use of this method or mitochondrial markers in general can be seriously limited (e.g. hybridising species, maternally-inherited endosymbionts) (Raupach et al 2020), numerous studies across a broad range of taxa have already proven that DNA barcoding provides a useful tool to speed up taxonomic procedures, such as automatic species identification by matching new sequences to existing taxa in reference libraries (e.g. Schmidt et al 2015;Grebennikov et al 2017;Coral Şahin et al 2019;Kelnarova et al 2019;Schmid-Egger et al 2019;Çakmak et al 2020), associating dimorphic sexes (e.g.…”