A revolutionary protocol to describe understudied hyperdiverse taxa and overcome the taxonomic impediment

Abstract

Here we elucidate and justify a DNA barcode approach to insect species description that can be applied to name tens of thousands of species of Ichneumonoidea and many other species-rich taxa. Each description consists of a lateral habitus image of the specimen, a COI barcode diagnosis, and the holotype specimen information required by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. We believe this approach, or a slight modification of it, will be useful for many other underdescribed hyperdiverse taxa, especially in the tropics. Due to the extreme species-richness of the Ichneumonoidea, the very low percentage of described species, and the lack of detailed biological information for most described species, the standard taxonomic approach is inefficient and overwhelmingly time consuming. A DNA barcode-based approach to initial description will provide a solid foundation of species hypotheses from which more comprehensive descriptions can be developed as other data, time, and budgets permit. Here we elucidate this view and detailed methodology that can generally be applied to species-rich underdescribed taxa. A real example is given by describing species in two genera, Hemichoma and Zelomorpha, reared from the Área de Conservación Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica. The generic type species Zelomorpha arizonensis is given a DNA barcode diagnosis and the following new species are described: Zelomorpha angelsolisi,

High-throughput sequencing for community analysis: the promise of DNA barcoding to uncover diversity, relatedness, abundances and interactions in spider communities

“…DNA barcodes garnered much enthusiasm after their initial establishment, with some authors even suggesting that traditional taxonomic methods be entirely replaced with a DNA sequence divergence-based taxonomy (Meierotto et al 2019;Tautz et al 2003). However, a divergent barcode sequence recovered from an unknown specimen is not enough to indicate the species status (Moritz and Cicero 2004;Obertegger et al 2018).…”

Three challenges to contemporaneous taxonomy from a licheno-mycological perspective

“…Assuming similar figures for other groups of organisms and a number of 10 million species still to be catalogued, this would require maintaining 1,000 full-time taxonomic experts over a period of 40 years, a number similar in magnitude to the number of currently active expert taxonomists (Gevin 2002). Such a much increased rate does not seem to be exaggerated, provided that this army of taxonomists is allowed to focus entirely on the task at hand and using advanced methods for rapidly cataloguing species (Mayo et al 2008;Clark et al 2009;La Salle et al 2009;Deans et al 2012;Riedel et al 2013;Lücking et al 2017;Meierotto et al 2019). With a balanced global distribution of taxonomists and an average salary cost of $50,000 per year per taxonomist, this would amount to $2 billion in total.…”

“…Just as any other branch of science, taxonomy continuously improves and reinvents itself along with the development of new concepts and technologies (Korf 2005;Sluys 2013). Milestones in taxonomy include the application of the microscope, quantitative numerical taxonomy and Hennigian cladistics, computerized interactive identification tools, genealogy-based species delimitation, machine-learning and feature-recognition tools, and approaches to rapidly cataloguing new species, among many others (Mayo et al 2008;La Salle et al 2009;Deans et al 2012;Riedel et al 2013;Lücking et al 2017;Meierotto et al 2019). Indeed, modern taxonomy is a far cry from Linnean taxonomy, even if it uses the same nomenclatural principles (Lücking 2019).…”

Integrative taxonomy of the genus Dudgeodes Sartori, 2008 (Insecta, Ephemeroptera, Teloganodidae) from the Philippines with description of new species and supplementary descriptions of Southeast Asian species

“…The use of short DNA fragment sequences, such as the cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COI), is recommended as an efficient start of the taxonomic pipeline to cluster putative new species for further assessment (Monaghan et al 2005, Kekkonen and Hebert 2014, deWaard et al 2019. Incorporating this process in the taxonomic pipeline has been shown to improve the rate of species discovery especially on hyperdiverse taxa (Kaltenbach and Gattolliat 2018, Meierotto et al 2019, Riedel and Narakusumo 2019. To a certain extent, "turbo-taxonomy" is proposed which involves initial clustering of samples using COI, followed by concise morphological descriptions and high-resolution digital imaging (Riedel et al 2013).…”