English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

A plea for DNA taxonomy

MPS-Authors
There are no MPG-Authors in the publication available
External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Tautz, D., Arctander, P., Minelli, A., Thomas, R. H., & Vogler, A. P. (2003). A plea for DNA taxonomy. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 18(2), 70-74. doi:10.1016/S0169-5347(02)00041-1.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0010-0E66-F
Abstract
Taxonomy underpins all biological research, with implications for many basic scientific and applied fields. Insights into the stability or change of animal and plant guilds require species identification on a broad scale and biodiversity questions have become a major public issue. But this domes at a time when taxonomy is facing a crisis, because ever fewer specialists are available. Here, we explore the possibility of using DNA-based methodology to overcome these problems. The utility of DNA sequences for taxonomic purposes is well established. However, all current taxonomic approaches intend to use DNA, at best, as an auxiliary criterion for identifying a species or a taxon, but have not given it a central role. We propose a scheme in which DNA would be the scaffold of a taxonomic reference system, whilst maintaining the importance of the morphological information associated with whole specimens.