Identification of West Siberian Quedius (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae) by COI barcodes calls for integrative taxonomy and curation of public DNA libraries

Krivosheeva, Valeria; Salnitska, Maria; Semerikova, Darya; Gebremeskel, Angesom; Ivanova, Anastasiya; Solodovnikov, Alexey

doi:10.3897/dez.72.143622

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Article: Identification of West Siberian Quedius (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae) by COI barcodes calls for integrative taxonomy and curation of public DNA libraries

Title

Identification of West Siberian Quedius (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae) by COI barcodes calls for integrative taxonomy and curation of public DNA libraries

By

Krivosheeva, Valeria
Salnitska, Maria
Semerikova, Darya
Gebremeskel, Angesom
Ivanova, Anastasiya
Solodovnikov, Alexey

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2025-7-8

Original Publication

Deutsche entomologische Zeitschrift

Volume

Series / Issue

Issue: 1

Pages

101--117

Subjects

Biodiversity , BLAST , BOLD , Insects , Species

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Berlin Nicolai'sche Verlags-Buchandlung 1881-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/dez.72.143622

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License Type URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Rights: https://biodiversitylibrary.org/permissions
Copyright Status: In copyright. Digitized with the permission of the rights holder.
Rights Holder: Copyright held by individual article author(s).

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Using West Siberian Quedius , we tested a widespread claim that DNA barcoding facilitates and accelerates taxonomic identification of arthropods. Our results indicate that even though neither BOLD nor GenBank had any barcodes from specimens of Quedius collected in West Siberia, these libraries were useful for the identification of our newly barcoded specimens from that region. However, correct identification was possible only after critical reciprocal evaluation of multiple conflicting data sources. Only six of 11–13 putative species could be confidently and easily identified to species level using the BOLD ID Engine or GenBank BLAST alone; all other cases required additional examination. Nevertheless, barcoding helped identify female singletons or teneral individuals that could not be identified morphologically and revealed that our own morphology-based species identification is prone to errors. Very subtle morphological differences between species may be revealed by DNA barcoding (e.g., Q. boops , Q. boopoides ), and dubious morphology-based species concepts can be tested and potentially improved (e.g., specific limits of Q. molochinus , Q. fellmani , and Q. nitipennis ). Finally, the use of barcoding helped record Q. balticus and Q. pseudolimbatus in West Siberia for the first time. The benefits of barcoding are valid only when reference barcodes in public libraries are correctly identified and kept up to date with changing taxonomy. We argue that more extensive use of barcoding in revisionary taxonomy will lead to faster-growing and better-curated DNA barcode libraries.