IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0066213.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A DNA-Based Registry for All Animal Species: The Barcode Index Number (BIN) System

Author

Listed:
  • Sujeevan Ratnasingham
  • Paul D N Hebert

Abstract

Because many animal species are undescribed, and because the identification of known species is often difficult, interim taxonomic nomenclature has often been used in biodiversity analysis. By assigning individuals to presumptive species, called operational taxonomic units (OTUs), these systems speed investigations into the patterning of biodiversity and enable studies that would otherwise be impossible. Although OTUs have conventionally been separated through their morphological divergence, DNA-based delineations are not only feasible, but have important advantages. OTU designation can be automated, data can be readily archived, and results can be easily compared among investigations. This study exploits these attributes to develop a persistent, species-level taxonomic registry for the animal kingdom based on the analysis of patterns of nucleotide variation in the barcode region of the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene. It begins by examining the correspondence between groups of specimens identified to a species through prior taxonomic work and those inferred from the analysis of COI sequence variation using one new (RESL) and four established (ABGD, CROP, GMYC, jMOTU) algorithms. It subsequently describes the implementation, and structural attributes of the Barcode Index Number (BIN) system. Aside from a pragmatic role in biodiversity assessments, BINs will aid revisionary taxonomy by flagging possible cases of synonymy, and by collating geographical information, descriptive metadata, and images for specimens that are likely to belong to the same species, even if it is undescribed. More than 274,000 BIN web pages are now available, creating a biodiversity resource that is positioned for rapid growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Sujeevan Ratnasingham & Paul D N Hebert, 2013. "A DNA-Based Registry for All Animal Species: The Barcode Index Number (BIN) System," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(7), pages 1-16, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0066213
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0066213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0066213
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0066213&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0066213?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Johannes Uhler & Sarah Redlich & Jie Zhang & Torsten Hothorn & Cynthia Tobisch & Jörg Ewald & Simon Thorn & Sebastian Seibold & Oliver Mitesser & Jérôme Morinière & Vedran Bozicevic & Caryl S. Benjami, 2021. "Relationship of insect biomass and richness with land use along a climate gradient," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Mari Kekkonen & Marko Mutanen & Lauri Kaila & Marko Nieminen & Paul D N Hebert, 2015. "Delineating Species with DNA Barcodes: A Case of Taxon Dependent Method Performance in Moths," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-32, April.
    3. Xiaolong Lin & Elisabeth Stur & Torbjørn Ekrem, 2015. "Exploring Genetic Divergence in a Species-Rich Insect Genus Using 2790 DNA Barcodes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-24, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0066213. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.