Article or data-article in scientific journal (B1)
What is biodiversity? Stepping forward from barcoding to understanding biological differences
List of Authors: Mikko Nikinmaa
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
Place: AMSTERDAM; PO BOX 211, 1000 AE AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
Publication year: 2014
Journal: Marine Genomics
Journal name in source: Marine Genomics
Journal acronym: Mar.Genom.
Volume number: 17
Start page: 65
End page: 67
Number of pages: 3
ISSN: 1874-7787
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.margen.2014.05.007
This opinion paper gives personal views of the direction that cataloguing biodiversity should be going in. Although molecular taxonomy enables rapid and high throughput identification of species, it needs to be anchored to traditional taxonomy, because without information of actual biological properties of species, DNA barcoding just reports differences in selected DNA sequences, which need not have anything to do with the biological properties of the organisms, and the reasons for the development of the species. Since functional differences are the most common reason behind species differences, the future of cataloguing biodiversity and biodiversity research is, in my opinion, in trying to integrate genomic research to comparative physiology in order to be able to evaluate which functional properties have likely been important in generating biodiversity. This task is overwhelming, and requires forgetting the traditional disciplines. Further, major problems associated with the present-day treatment of genomic data are presented from my viewpoint (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.