the taxonomic significance of species that have only been observed once the genus gymnodinium (dinoflagellata) as an example物种的分类意义只有被观察到当属gymnodinium(dinoflagellata)作为一个例子.pdfVIP

The Taxonomic Significance of Species That Have Only Been Observed Once: The Genus Gymnodinium (Dinoflagellata) as an Example 1 1 2,3 Anne E. Thessen *, David J. Patterson , Shauna A. Murray 1 Center for Library and Informatics, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, United States of America, 2 School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 3 Sydney Institute of Marine Sciences, Mosman, Australia Abstract Taxonomists have been tasked with cataloguing and quantifying the Earth’s biodiversity. Their progress is measured in code-compliant species descriptions that include text, images, type material and molecular sequences. It is from this material that other researchers are to identify individuals of the same species in future observations. It has been estimated that 13% to 22% (depending on taxonomic group) of described species have only ever been observed once. Species that have only been observed at the time and place of their original description are referred to as oncers. Oncers are important to our current understanding of biodiversity. They may be validly described species that are members of a rare biosphere, or they may indicate endemism, or that these species are limited to very constrained niches. Alternatively, they may reflect that taxonomic practices are too poor to allow the organism to be re-identified or that the descriptions are unknown to other researchers. If the latter are true, our current tally of species will not be an accurate indication of what we know. In order to investigate this phenomenon and its potential causes, we examined the microbial eukaryote genus Gymnodinium. Th