Molecular taxonomy and natural history collections.

Abstract

Using a wide diversity of animal groups, this thesis illustrates how molecular data can provide new insights into taxonomic studies. Traditional taxonomic research within natural history collections is based on morphological characters. Most studies show a clear congruence between morphological and genetically distinguished groups. This thesis also shows examples in which the number of genetically distinguished groups is either smaller, or larger, than the number of morphological groups. The first case usually involves undescribed, possibly cryptic, species; in the latter case, morphological differences do not reflect a difference in genealogy (historical origin). Apparent discrepancies between identifications based on morphology and groups that can be distinguished genetically, are sometimes caused by human errors. A number of such errors are demonstrated in GenBank, a public database for DNA sequences. It is shown that genotyping of type-specimens can settle long-standing disputes and facilitate the description of new species. Sequence data can also be used for identification purposes as shown for both taxonomic and forensic studies. In the last chapter a mitogenome of a collection specimen is sequenced without the use of PCR (polymerase chain reaction). This illustrates the potential of NGS (next generation sequencing) for future taxonomic or phylogenetic studies.