Ministry of Livestock Development and Fisheries, Veterinary Investigation Centre, Temeke, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Mol Ecol Resour. 2011 May;11(3):442-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-0998.2011.02980.x. Epub 2011 Feb 8.
Efficient tools for consistent species identification are important in wildlife conservation as it can provide information on the levels of species exploitation and assist in solving forensic-related problems. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) barcode in species identification of Tanzanian antelope species. A 470 base-pair region of the COI gene was examined in 95 specimens representing 20 species of antelopes, buffalo and domestic Bovidae. All the Tanzanian species showed unique clades, and sequence divergence within species was <1%, whereas divergence between species ranged from 6.3% to 22%. Lowest interspecific divergence was noted within the Tragelaphus genus. Neighbour-joining phylogenetic analyses demonstrated that the examined COI region provided correct and highly supported species clustering using short fragments down to 100 base-pair lengths. This study demonstrates that even short COI fragments can efficiently identify antelope species, thus demonstrating its high potential for use in wildlife conservation activities.
有效的物种鉴定工具在野生动物保护中非常重要，因为它可以提供物种开发水平的信息，并有助于解决与法医学相关的问题。在本研究中，我们评估了线粒体细胞色素 c 氧化酶亚基 I（COI）条码在坦桑尼亚羚羊物种鉴定中的有效性。在代表 20 种羚羊、水牛和家养牛科动物的 95 个标本中，我们检测了 COI 基因的 470 个碱基对区域。所有坦桑尼亚物种都显示出独特的分支，种内序列差异<1%，而种间差异则在 6.3%至 22%之间。在 Tragelaphus 属内观察到最低的种间差异。邻接法系统发育分析表明，即使使用 100 个碱基对长度的短片段，所检测的 COI 区域也能提供正确和高度支持的物种聚类。本研究表明，即使是短的 COI 片段也能有效地鉴定羚羊物种，因此证明了它在野生动物保护活动中的巨大潜力。
