Integrated Operational Taxonomic Units (IOTUs) in Echolocating Bats: A Bridge between Molecular and Traditional Taxonomy

• Main Authors: Andrea Galimberti, Martina Spada, Danilo Russo, Mauro Mucedda, Paolo Agnelli, Angelica Crottini, Emanuele Ferri, Adriano Martinoli, Maurizio Casiraghi
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Myotis nattereri
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.668.5941; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3386196/pdf/pone.0040122.pdf

Background: Nowadays, molecular techniques are widespread tools for the identification of biological entities. However, until very few years ago, their application to taxonomy provoked intense debates between traditional and molecular taxonomists. To prevent every kind of disagreement, it is essential to standardize taxonomic definitions. Along these lines, we introduced the concept of Integrated Operational Taxonomic Unit (IOTU). IOTUs come from the concept of Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) and paralleled the Molecular Operational Taxonomic Unit (MOTU). The latter is largely used as a standard in many molecular-based works (even if not always explicitly formalized). However, while MOTUs are assigned solely on molecular variation criteria, IOTUs are identified from patterns of molecular variation that are supported by at least one more taxonomic characteristic. Methodology/Principal Findings: We tested the use of IOTUs on the widest DNA barcoding dataset of Italian echolocating bats species ever assembled (i.e. 31 species, 209 samples). We identified 31 molecular entities, 26 of which corresponded to the morphologically assigned species, two MOTUs and three IOTUs. Interestingly, we found three IOTUs in Myotis nattereri, one of which is a newly described lineage found only in central and southern Italy. In addition, we found a level of molecular variability within four vespertilionid species deserving further analyses. According to our scheme two of them (i.e.