Pfenninger Markus, Nowak Carsten, Kley Christoph, Steinke Dirk, Streit Bruno
Abteilung Okologie & Evolution, J.W. Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, Main, Germany.
Mol Ecol. 2007 May;16(9):1957-68. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2006.03136.x.
Biodiversity studies require species level analyses for the accurate assessment of community structures. However, while specialized taxonomic knowledge is only rarely available for routine identifications, DNA taxonomy and DNA barcoding could provide the taxonomic basis for ecological inferences. In this study, we assessed the community structure of sediment dwelling, morphologically cryptic Chironomus larvae in the Rhine-valley plain/Germany, comparing larval type classification, cytotaxonomy, DNA taxonomy and barcoding. While larval type classification performed poorly, cytotaxonomy and DNA-based methods yielded comparable results: detrended correspondence analysis and permutation analyses indicated that the assemblages are not randomly but competitively structured. However, DNA taxonomy identified an additional species that could not be resolved by the traditional method. We argue that DNA-based identification methods such as DNA barcoding can be a valuable tool to increase accuracy, objectivity and comparability of the taxonomic assessment in biodiversity and community ecology studies.
生物多样性研究需要在物种水平上进行分析，以便准确评估群落结构。然而，虽然常规鉴定很少能获得专业的分类学知识，但DNA分类学和DNA条形码技术可为生态推断提供分类学基础。在本研究中，我们评估了德国莱茵河谷平原沉积物中形态隐秘的摇蚊幼虫的群落结构，比较了幼虫类型分类、细胞分类学、DNA分类学和条形码技术。虽然幼虫类型分类效果不佳，但细胞分类学和基于DNA的方法得出了可比的结果：除趋势对应分析和置换分析表明，这些组合不是随机构建的，而是具有竞争性结构。然而，DNA分类学识别出了一个传统方法无法分辨的额外物种。我们认为，基于DNA的识别方法，如DNA条形码技术，可成为提高生物多样性和群落生态学研究中分类评估准确性、客观性和可比性的宝贵工具。
