Systematic barcoding of available cultures has revealed instances of out-dated nomenclature, cryptic diversity, and misidentifications, all of which may be expected in such a diverse and abundant group.
Our findings provide new data that will be useful to unravel the cryptic diversity and phylogeographic patterns of the green alga partners of lichens.
This hidden DNA and the possibly important traits it represents are known as "cryptic diversity," and much of it is being lost, experts say, as the range of species contracts, fragments, and otherwise changes.
With regard to population substructure and genetic distances directed sampling is more appropriate to uncover cryptic diversity and regional substructure in populations such as the Druze, characterized by high levels of endogamy and local founder effects.
The advantage is that we gain a broad view of the extent of cryptic diversity and taxonomic oversplitting, and with future development of more nuclear markers, multi-locus approaches could be applied to unresolved, closely related species pairs.
In addition, we address patterns of cryptic diversity and microendemism using species delimitation methods, with taxonomic and conservation implications.
We provide evidence for important cryptic diversity and we defined and mapped the distribution of 27 molecular operational taxonomic units (MOTUs) that may correspond to presumable species.
While morphological differences may be subtle and thus easily overlooked, high genetic divergences within species often indicate cryptic diversity and can direct taxonomic analysis.
This study demonstrated the critical importance of multilocus nuclear data for the unbiased assessment of cryptic diversity and species delimitation in soil invertebrates.
"Nested" cryptic diversity, and the difficulties in correctly identifying invasive species that arise from it, represent a major challenge for managing biodiversity.
