Collembola, the biological species concept and the underestimation of global species richness
Despite its ancient origin, global distribution and abundance in nearly all habitats, the class Collembola is comprised of only 8000 described species and is estimated to number no more than 50 000. Many morphologically defined species have broad geographical ranges that span continents, and recent...
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Published in | Molecular ecology Vol. 22; no. 21; pp. 5382 - 5396 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Oxford
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
01.11.2013
Blackwell |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Despite its ancient origin, global distribution and abundance in nearly all habitats, the class Collembola is comprised of only 8000 described species and is estimated to number no more than 50 000. Many morphologically defined species have broad geographical ranges that span continents, and recent molecular work has revealed high genetic diversity within species. However, the evolutionary significance of this genetic diversity is unknown. In this study, we sample five morphological species of the globally distributed genus Lepidocyrtus from 14 Panamanian sampling sites to characterize genetic diversity and test morphospecies against the biological species concept. Mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequence data were analysed and a total of 58 molecular lineages revealed. Deep lineage diversification was recovered, with 30 molecular lineages estimated to have established more than 10 million years ago, and the origin almost all contemporary lineages preceding the onset of the Pleistocene (~2 Mya). Thirty‐four lineages were sampled in sympatry revealing unambiguous cosegregation of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequence variation, consistent with biological species. Species richness within the class Collembola and the geographical structure of this diversity are substantially misrepresented components of terrestrial animal biodiversity. We speculate that global species richness of Collembola could be at least an order of magnitude greater than a previous estimate of 50 000 species. |
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Bibliography: | Leverhulme Trust ark:/67375/WNG-6CVHNL8F-J Italian Ministry of Education ArticleID:MEC12472 Fig. S1. Lepidocyrtus cf vexans. Fig. S2. Boxplots showing the distributions of pairwise p-distances (π) for mtDNA COII and nuclear EF1α sequence data from morphospecies within the genus Lepidocyrtus. Fig. S3. Stacked histograms summarising results of amova analyses of mtDNA COII and nuclear EF1α sequence data from morphospecies within the genus Lepidocyrtus. Fig. S4. Summary tree from Bayesian inference (BI) and maximum likelihood (ML) analyses of mtDNA COII sequence data from morphospecies within the genus Lepidocyrtus. Fig. S5. Summary tree from Bayesian inference (BI) and maximum likelihood (ML) analyses of nuclear EF1α sequence data from morphospecies within the genus Lepidocyrtus. Fig. S6. Boxplots showing the distributions of most recent common ancestor (MRCA) estimates for molecular lineages within morphospecies from the genus Lepidocyrtus sampled from three Panamanian geological subdivisions. Fig. S7. Boxplots showing the distributions of pairwise p-distances for mtDNA COII and nuclear EF1α sequences in sympatric and allopatric molecular lineages within morphospecies from the genus Lepidocyrtus.Data S1. COII dataset.Data S2. EF1α dataset.Data S3. Sample identification table. Smithsonian Institution Short-fellowship Program istex:862E568E6757FC8242ACD1235B9BF5F8D2F58369 ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0962-1083 1365-294X |
DOI: | 10.1111/mec.12472 |