Contribution to a reference library of DNA barcodes of Colombian freshwater fishes

BACKGROUND: The Barcode of Life initiative was originally motivated by the large number of species, taxonomic difficulties and the limited number of expert taxonomists. Colombia has 1,610 freshwater fish species and comprises the second largest diversity of this group in the world. As genetic information continues to be limited, we constructed a reference collection of DNA sequences of Colombian freshwater fishes deposited in the Ichthyology Collection of the University of Antioquia (CIUA), thus joining the multiple efforts that have been made in the country to contribute to the knowledge of genetic diversity in order to strengthen the inventories of biological collections and facilitate the solution of taxonomic issues in the future. NEW INFORMATION: This study contributes to the knowledge on the DNA barcodes and occurrence records of 96 species of Colombian freshwater fishes. Fifty-seven of the species represented in this dataset were already available in the Barcode Of Life Data System (BOLD System), while 39 correspond to new species to the BOLD System. Forty-nine specimens were collected in the Atrato River Basin and 708 in the Magdalena-Cauca asin during the period 2010-2020. Two species (Loricariichthysbrunneus (Hancock, 1828) and Poeciliasphenops Valenciennes, 1846) are considered exotic to the Atrato, Cauca and Magdalena Basins and four species (Oncorhynchusmykiss (Walbaum, 1792), Oreochromisniloticus (Linnaeus, 1758), Parachromisfriedrichsthalii (Heckel, 1840) and Xiphophorushelleri Heckel, 1848) are exotic to the Colombian hydrogeographic regions. All specimens are deposited in CIUA and have their DNA barcodes made publicly available in the BOLD online database. The geographical distribution dataset can be freely accessed through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).