DNA barcoding and mini-barcoding as molecular tools for identification of fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae) | ||||
| Arab Journal of Biotechnology | ||||
| Volume 19, Issue 1, June 2016, Page 1-8 PDF (554.96 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/arjb.2016.428485 | ||||
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| Abstract | ||||
| The objectives of this study were to assess the proportions of correct identifications (ID) in tested genera and to elucidate the efficacy of three fragments (min-barcode) of COI barcode region in providing comparable information. The DNA barcoding in three tephritid genera was tested by considering 493 DNA barcodes involving 86 species belonging to the genera Bactrocera (33 species), Ceratitis (21 species) and Dacus (32 species). Barcoding simulations were performed by using a reference dataset of 15,948 insect DNA barcodes. It was performed under a “best case scenario” viz. by providing one or more potential con-specific matches in the reference dataset for each query. Results showed that the Best Match (BM) criterion (i.e. the criterion currently adopted by BOLD) yielded different proportions of correctly identified taxa in Bactrocera (BM=0.839), Ceratitis (BM=0.868) and Dacus (BM=0.962). The proportions of correctly identified queries by using three mini-barcode fragments (MB1, MB2, MB3) of 220bp (corresponding to the first, second and last third of the COI barcode region) ranged from 0.71 ± 0.17 in MB1 to 0.83 ± 0.10 in MB2. Currently, however, the application of DNA barcoding in tephritid species is limited by the low number of barcoded taxa in the reference databases. This situation increases the probability of making Type II errors (i.e. incorrect ID for queries without conspecifics in the reference database). On the other hand, the probability of making Type I errors (incorrect ID for queries with conspecifics in the database) is relatively limited (4-16% in our simulations). These considerations suggest that DNA barcoding may not be a fool proof method for the molecular ID of tephritid fruit flies. Still, DNA barcoding could be effective under well-defined conditions, where only a limited number of well-known tephritid taxa, with well characterized intraspecific variation, are to be distinguished. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Fruit-fly; Barcoding gap; Mini-barcoding; Conspecifics molecular identification | ||||
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