Examination of sequence variations in partial mitochondrial 12S gene amongst damselfish species as references for DNA barcoding

Accurate species identification, based on DNA barcoding, can be achieved when sufficient sequence variations are present amongst species in the sampled marker. In general, the ability to discriminate species decreases with shorter sequences; however, shorter regions have a merit in amplification success by the polymerase chain reaction. In either case, it is important to investigate sequence variations amongst species before barcoding to understand its reliability and limitations. In this study, we investigate how accurately short, but hypervariable portion of the mitochondrial 12S ribosomal RNA (12S) gene (MiFish region with approximately 180 bp) is used to identify each species in diversified pomacentrid fishes compared with the longer region of the same gene (approximately 750 bp). We prepared three datasets with 301 sequences of the MiFish region for 150 species, the same 301 of sequences of the longer 12S region and 476 sequences of the MiFish region for 183 species. Neighbour-joining (NJ) analyses and genetic distance analyses revealed several indistinguishable pairs of species in these DNA regions. Although the number of such pairs was larger in the MiFish region, 83.6% (153 of 183) of species possessed respective unique sequences even in the MiFish region (versus 96.0% [144 of 150 species] in the longer 12S region). A part of indistinguishable pairs of species might have caused by mitochondrial DNA introgressions and taxonomically unresolved problems. Our analysis clarified the effectiveness and limitations of species identification using DNA barcoding for Pomacentridae and the sequences we provided here contribute to the expansion of references for pomacentrid mitochondrial 12S sequences.