Volumen 46 - Número 1 - 35-42

Volumen 46 - Número 1: 35-42 \| 2011 Article	PDF
DNA barcoding of marine polychaetes species of southern Patagonian fjords
Claudia S. Maturana^1*, Rodrigo A. Moreno^1,2,3, Fabio A. Labra², Claudio A. González-Wevar¹, Nicolás Rozbaczylo⁴, Franklin D. Carrasco⁵ and Elie Poulin¹
¹Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad (IEB), Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile, Casilla 653, Santiago, Chile ²Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Ambientales (CIENCIA-UST), Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Santo Tomás, Ejército 146, Santiago, Chile ³Departamento de Ciencias Básicas, Universidad Santo Tomás, Avenida Arturo Prat 850, Concepción, Chile ⁴Departamento de Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Casilla 114-D, Santiago, Chile ⁵Departamento de Oceanografía, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Oceanográficas, Universidad de Concepción, Casilla 160-C, Concepción, Chile *This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Accurate species identification remains a basic first step in any study of biodiversity, particularly for global changes and their consequences. Thus, there is a pressing need for taxonomic expertise in a broad range of taxa. DNA barcoding has proved to be a powerful alternative method to traditional morphological approaches, allowing to complement identification techniques for living organisms. In this study, we assess intraspecific and interspecific genetic divergence among marine polychaetes from Patagonian fjords of southern Chile, using mitochondrial Cytochrome c Oxidase Subunit I (COI) gene. Our results showed that a total of 13 polychaetes species identified in this study exhibited high levels of interspecific variation among 31 analyzed sequences. Mean pairwise sequence distances comparisons based on K2P within species ranged from 0.2 to 0.4%. In contrast, interspecific comparisons were much higher and ranged between 18 to 47%, with the exception of the congeneric species Asychis chilensis and Asychis amphiglypta that showed high levels of genetic similarities and absence of reciprocal monophyly. This study presents the first information on DNA barcoding for polychaetes species in the southern Chile, and it establishes the effectiveness of DNA barcoding for identification of marine polychaetes species from Patagonian Fjords, thus making it available to a much broader range of scientists.
Key words: Molecular taxonomy, Polychaeta, Cytochrome c Oxydase Subunit I, CIMAR-13 Fjords, Chile
PDF