Filling the gap - COI barcode resolution in eastern Palearctic birds.docVIP

Frontiers in Zoology BioMedCentral Research Open Access Filling the gap - COI barcode resolution in eastern Palearctic birds Kevin CR Kerr*1, Sharon M Birks2, Mikhail V Kalyakin3, Yaroslav A Redkin3, Eugeny A Koblik3 and Paul DN Hebert1 Address: 1Department of Integrative Biology, Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada, 2Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA and 3Zoological Museum of Moscow Lomonosov University, Moscow, Russia Email: Kevin CR Kerr* - kkerr@uoguelph.ca; Sharon M Birks - sbirks@; Mikhail V Kalyakin - kalyakin@zmmu.msu.ru; Yaroslav A Redkin - yardo@mail.ru; Eugeny A Koblik - koblik@zmmu.msu.ru; Paul DN Hebert - phebert@uoguelph.ca * Corresponding author Published: 9 December 2009 Received: 22 September 2009 Accepted: 9 December 2009 Frontiers in Zoology 2009, 6:29 doi:10.1186/1742-9994-6-29 This article is available from: /content/6/1/29 ? 2009 Kerr et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The Palearctic region supports relatively few avian species, yet recent molecular studies have revealed that cryptic lineages likely still persist unrecognized. A broad survey of cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) sequences, or DNA barcodes, can aid on this front by providing molecular diagnostics for species assignment. Barcodes have already been extensively surveyed in the Nearctic, which provides an interesting comparison to this region; faunal interchange between these regions has been very dynamic. We explored COI sequence divergence within and between species of Palearctic birds, including samples from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. As of