Identifying species of moths (Lepidoptera) from Baihua Mountain, Beijing, China, using DNA barcodes

Abstract

DNA barcoding has become a promising means for the identification of organisms of all life-history stages. Currently, distance-based and tree-based methods are most widely used to define species boundaries and uncover cryptic species. However, there is no universal threshold of genetic distance values that can be used to distinguish taxonomic groups. Alternatively, DNA barcoding can deploy a “character-based” method, whereby species are identified through the discrete nucleotide substitutions. Our research focuses on the delimitation of moth species using DNA-barcoding methods. We analyzed 393 Lepidopteran specimens belonging to 80 morphologically recognized species with a standard cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) sequencing approach, and deployed tree-based, distance-based, and diagnostic character-based methods to identify the taxa. The tree-based method divided the 393 specimens into 79 taxa (species), and the distance-based method divided them into 84 taxa (species). Although the diagnostic character-based method found only 39 so-identifiable species in the 80 species, with a reduction in sample size the accuracy rate substantially improved. For example, in the Arctiidae subset, all 12 species had diagnostics characteristics. Compared with traditional morphological method, molecular taxonomy performed well. All three methods enable the rapid delimitation of species, although they have different characteristics and different strengths. The tree-based and distance-based methods can be used for accurate species identification and biodiversity studies in large data sets, while the character-based method performs well in small data sets and can also be used as the foundation of species-specific biochips.

Evaluating the accuracy of morphological identification of insect pests of rice crops using DNA barcoding

“…Moreover, the maximum intrasequence variation recorded was lower than the distance with NN for different species of agricultural pests. Liu et al (2014) worked on Noctuidae and Arctiidae family and observed the similar results. Similar results were attained by Gopurenko et al (2013) during identification of leafhoppers, treehoppers, and planthoppers (Hemiptera: Auchenorrhyncha) via DNA barcoding.…”

Molecular DNA identification of medicinal plants used by traditional healers in Malaysia

“…This method proposes a standard definition of the barcode gap and can be used to partition the dataset into candidate species, even when two distributions overlap (see Liu et al, 2014). Sequences of each dataset (ITS2, N = 20, 13 species; rpoC1, N = 11, 4 species; trnH-psbA, N = 20, 6 species) were uploaded to http://wwwabi.snv.jussieu.fr/public/abgd/abgdweb.html.…”

“…The ABGD is a tool that automatically finds the barcode gap, and can be used when two distributions overlap to partition the dataset into candidate species (Puillandre et al, 2012;Liu et al, 2014). In this study, the ABGD method for both initial and recursive partition for the trnH-psbA dataset (N = 20, six species) resulted in six groups with P ranging from 0.001 to 0.0129, three groups with P at 0.0215, and two groups with P ranging from 0.0359 to 0.1000 (Table 5).…”

“…Barcoding studies normally use phylogenetic trees to assign species names, and the most commonly used tree is neighbor-joining, in which the assessment is based on phenetic distance and the evolutionary information of a species (Liu et al, 2014). Based on the neighborjoining tree we constructed (Figure 2), each barcode marker successfully separated each genus by representing monophyletic clades, in which each clade appeared distinctly distant from other clades.…”

DNA barcoding of Geometridae moths (Insecta: Lepidoptera): a preliminary effort from Namdapha National Park, Eastern Himalaya

“…Since the inception of DNA barcoding as a molecular technique for species identification (Hebert et al 2003), many studies have been targeted to know the region-specific lepidopteran biodiversity (Lukhtanov et al 2009;Dinca et al 2011;deWaard et al 2011;Hausmann et al 2011Hausmann et al , 2013Wilson et al 2013;Huemer et al 2014;Liu et al 2014;Zahiri et al 2014). Several studies have been shown to resolving the taxonomic quest and the dilemma in lepidopteran systematics (Hajibabaei et al 2006;Burns et al 2008;Hausmann et al 2009;Mutanen et al 2012;Jiang et al 2017).…”