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DNA Barcoding of Metazoan Zooplankton Copepods from South Korea.

Authors :
Su Youn Baek
Kuem Hee Jang
Eun Hwa Choi
Shi Hyun Ryu
Sang Ki Kim
Jin Hee Lee
Young Jin Lim
Jimin Lee
Jumin Jun
Myounghai Kwak
Young-Sup Lee
Jae-Sam Hwang
Balu Alagar Venmathi Maran
Cheon Young Chang
Il-Hoi Kim
Ui Wook Hwang
Source :
PLoS ONE, Vol 11, Iss 7, p e0157307 (2016)
Publication Year :
2016
Publisher :
Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2016.

Abstract

Copepods, small aquatic crustaceans, are the most abundant metazoan zooplankton and outnumber every other group of multicellular animals on earth. In spite of ecological and biological importance in aquatic environment, their morphological plasticity, originated from their various lifestyles and their incomparable capacity to adapt to a variety of environments, has made the identification of species challenging, even for expert taxonomists. Molecular approaches to species identification have allowed rapid detection, discrimination, and identification of cryptic or sibling species based on DNA sequence data. We examined sequence variation of a partial mitochondrial cytochrome C oxidase I gene (COI) from 133 copepod individuals collected from the Korean Peninsula, in order to identify and discriminate 94 copepod species covering six copepod orders of Calanoida, Cyclopoida, Harpacticoida, Monstrilloida, Poecilostomatoida and Siphonostomatoida. The results showed that there exists a clear gap with ca. 20 fold difference between the averages of within-specific sequence divergence (2.42%) and that of between-specific sequence divergence (42.79%) in COI, suggesting the plausible utility of this gene in delimitating copepod species. The results showed, with the COI barcoding data among 94 copepod species, that a copepod species could be distinguished from the others very clearly, only with four exceptions as followings: Mesocyclops dissimilis-Mesocyclops pehpeiensis (0.26% K2P distance in percent) and Oithona davisae-Oithona similis (1.1%) in Cyclopoida, Ostrincola japonica-Pseudomyicola spinosus (1.5%) in Poecilostomatoida, and Hatschekia japonica-Caligus quadratus (5.2%) in Siphonostomatoida. Thus, it strongly indicated that COI may be a useful tool in identifying various copepod species and make an initial progress toward the construction of a comprehensive DNA barcode database for copepods inhabiting the Korean Peninsula.

Subjects

Subjects :
Medicine
Science

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
19326203
Volume :
11
Issue :
7
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
PLoS ONE
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.f09c568032b54158b912e7e29c12787d
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157307