Shedding the mitochondrial blinkers: A long-overdue challenge for species delimitation in herpetology
Wolfgang Wüster · 2025 · Vertebrate Zoology
WASTE classifies this as Negative / Null Result Report · AI classification, approximate
The study found no significant effect — useful as a negative control or null benchmark for your own design.
Abstract
The advent of molecular methods has revolutionised the field of species delimitation and description, one of the key tasks of systematic biology. In animal taxonomy, one marker, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) molecule, has acquired and retained disproportionate influence. This is despite its uniparental, clonal mode of inheritance, as a result of which the entire molecule acts as a single locus, and that precludes its use as a test for admixture between putative lineages, a key consideration in species delimitation. To establish the extent to which the limitations of mtDNA affect present-day ta
Abstract by Wolfgang Wüster, Vertebrate Zoology (2025) — licensed CC BY 4.0.
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Metadata source: OpenAlex · DOI 10.3897/vz.75.e161536