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On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation?
BACKGROUND: Although most taxonomists agree that species are independently evolving metapopulation lineages that should be delimited with several kinds of data, the taxonomic practice in Malagasy primates (Lemuriformes) looks quite different. Several recently described lemur species are based solely...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3225081/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21777472 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-216 |
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author | Markolf, Matthias Brameier, Markus Kappeler, Peter M |
author_facet | Markolf, Matthias Brameier, Markus Kappeler, Peter M |
author_sort | Markolf, Matthias |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Although most taxonomists agree that species are independently evolving metapopulation lineages that should be delimited with several kinds of data, the taxonomic practice in Malagasy primates (Lemuriformes) looks quite different. Several recently described lemur species are based solely on evidence of genetic distance and diagnostic characters of mitochondrial DNA sequences sampled from a few individuals per location. Here we explore the validity of this procedure for species delimitation in lemurs using published sequence data. RESULTS: We show that genetic distance estimates and Population Aggregation Analysis (PAA) are inappropriate for species delimitation in this group of primates. Intra- and interspecific genetic distances overlapped in 14 of 17 cases independent of the genetic marker used. A simulation of a fictive taxonomic study indicated that for the mitochondrial D-loop the minimum required number of individuals sampled per location is 10 in order to avoid false positives via PAA. CONCLUSIONS: Genetic distances estimates and PAA alone should not be used for species delimitation in lemurs. Instead, several nuclear and sex-specific loci should be considered and combined with other data sets from morphology, ecology or behavior. Independent of the data source, sampling should be done in a way to ensure a quantitative comparison of intra- and interspecific variation of the taxa in question. The results of our study also indicate that several of the recently described lemur species should be reevaluated with additional data and that the number of good species among the currently known taxa is probably lower than currently assumed. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3225081 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-32250812011-11-29 On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation? Markolf, Matthias Brameier, Markus Kappeler, Peter M BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Although most taxonomists agree that species are independently evolving metapopulation lineages that should be delimited with several kinds of data, the taxonomic practice in Malagasy primates (Lemuriformes) looks quite different. Several recently described lemur species are based solely on evidence of genetic distance and diagnostic characters of mitochondrial DNA sequences sampled from a few individuals per location. Here we explore the validity of this procedure for species delimitation in lemurs using published sequence data. RESULTS: We show that genetic distance estimates and Population Aggregation Analysis (PAA) are inappropriate for species delimitation in this group of primates. Intra- and interspecific genetic distances overlapped in 14 of 17 cases independent of the genetic marker used. A simulation of a fictive taxonomic study indicated that for the mitochondrial D-loop the minimum required number of individuals sampled per location is 10 in order to avoid false positives via PAA. CONCLUSIONS: Genetic distances estimates and PAA alone should not be used for species delimitation in lemurs. Instead, several nuclear and sex-specific loci should be considered and combined with other data sets from morphology, ecology or behavior. Independent of the data source, sampling should be done in a way to ensure a quantitative comparison of intra- and interspecific variation of the taxa in question. The results of our study also indicate that several of the recently described lemur species should be reevaluated with additional data and that the number of good species among the currently known taxa is probably lower than currently assumed. BioMed Central 2011-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC3225081/ /pubmed/21777472 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-216 Text en Copyright ©2011 Markolf et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Markolf, Matthias Brameier, Markus Kappeler, Peter M On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation? |
title | On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation? |
title_full | On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation? |
title_fullStr | On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation? |
title_full_unstemmed | On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation? |
title_short | On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation? |
title_sort | on species delimitation: yet another lemur species or just genetic variation? |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3225081/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21777472 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-216 |
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