title: Genetic identification of Southern Ocean octopod samples using mtCOI.
abstract: East Antarctic octopods were identified by sequencing mtCOI and using four analytical approaches: Neighbor-joining by Kimura-2-Parameter-based distances, character-based, BLAST, and Bayesian Inference of Phylogeny. Although the distance-based analytical approaches identified a high proportion of the sequences (99.5% to genus and 88.1% to species level), these results are undermined by the absence of a clear gap between intra- and interspecific variation. The character-based approach gave highly conflicting results compared to the distance-based methods and failed to identify apomorphic characters for many of the species. While a DNA independent approach is necessary for validation of the method comparisons, crude morphological observations give early support to the distance-based results and indicate extensive range expansions of several species compared to previous studies. Furthermore, the use of distance-based phylogenetic methods nevertheless group specimens into plausible species clades that are highly useful in non-taxonomical or non-systematic studies.
authors.affiliation: Norwegian University of Technology and Science, Department of Biology, Trondheim Biological Station, N-7491, Trondheim, Norway.
authors.forename: Eivind Andreas Baste
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Undheim
authors.forename: Janette Ann
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Norman
authors.forename: Hanne Halkinrud
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Thoen
authors.forename: Bryan Grieg
authors.initials: BG
authors.lastname: Fry
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000864:Antarctic Regions; D001483:Base Sequence; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D049830:Cephalopoda / Q000235:genetics; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D017931:DNA Primers; D005784:Gene Amplification; D014644:Genetic Variation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D049831:Octopodiformes / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D017931:DNA Primers; D004247:DNA