Diagnostics
Morphological and Molecular taxonomy
Terrestrial isopod from the genus Buddelundia
Morphological taxonomy
‘Traditional’ taxonomy relies on morphological characteristics to define and describe species’. Most of the invertebrates encountered during surveys are not described formally so a parataxonomy is used for each project. Alacran’s parataxonomy utilises contemporary character systems to diagnose different morphospecies in a given collection. In all instances, Alacran tries to verify all morphospecies using DNA based species delimitation.
Molecular species delimitation (also referred to as DNA barcoding) utilises data derived from the organism’s DNA to identify or verify which species’ they belong to. In most instances one or more fragments from the organisms genome are compared with homologous DNA fragments from other organisms. The relationship of these organisms to one another are assessed using phylogenetic analyses, principally Bayesian and/or RAxML analyses.
Molecular Species Delimitation
DNA Barcoding
Image depicting DNA sequence fragment of the marker COI, from the trapdoor spider Aname mellosa