Although some have been assigned to extant vent polychaete groups, morphological identifications are not generally consistent with estimates of molecular divergence (Little & Vrijenhoek, 2003; Vrijenhoek, 2013) and there is potential confusion with morphologically similar polychaete tubes (Kiel & Dando, 2009).
Prorhinotermes simplex and Coptotermes gestroi were collected in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, and their morphological identification was confirmed by DNA barcoding (accessions JX975355 and MF373426, respectively).
Morphological identification was carried out at IMTECH, Chandigarh and molecular characterization was carried at Merck India Ltd ,Bangalore.
In this paper chromatic variability of all the collected specimens were provided and the accuracy of initial morphological identification was discussed.
Nevertheless, the study of free-living marine nematodes is held back because their morphological identification is notoriously difficult.
Likewise, morphological identification is inapplicable when studying population biology or reproductive success of gametophytes in the field.
When the in situ morphological identification is tricky, samples are sent to the National Plant Protection Laboratory LNPVV) which specializes in the molecular identification of plant pests and pathogens.
Unfortunately, no information about the mitochondrial lineage of the samples, which could have complemented the morphological identification, was given by Götherström et al.Moreover, eleven of their ancient samples with intermediate size or sure domestic provenance belonged to the Y1 haplogroup.
For instance, only teeth remained in the Early Upper Paleolithic site of Kostenski in Eastern Europe, which proved vital in understanding the dispersal of modern humans even though morphological identification was impossible [22].
Morphological identification was done using keys provided by [ 14– 16].
