New taxonomy and old collections: integrating DNA barcoding into the collection curation process.

Because they house large biodiversity collections and are also research centres with sequencing facilities, natural history museums are well placed to develop DNA barcoding best practices. The main difficulty is generally the vouchering system: it must ensure that all data produced remain attached to the corresponding specimen, from the field to publication in articles and online databases. The Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris is one of the leading laboratories in the Marine Barcode of Life (MarBOL) project, which was used as a pilot programme to include barcode collections for marine molluscs and crustaceans. The system is based on two relational databases. The first one classically records the data (locality and identification) attached to the specimens. In the second one, tissue-clippings, DNA extractions (both preserved in 2D barcode tubes) and PCR data (including primers) are linked to the corresponding specimen. All the steps of the process [sampling event, specimen identification, molecular processing, data submission to Barcode Of Life Database (BOLD) and GenBank] are thus linked together. Furthermore, we have developed several web-based tools to automatically upload data into the system, control the quality of the sequences produced and facilitate the submission to online databases. This work is the result of a joint effort from several teams in the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), but also from a collaborative network of taxonomists and molecular systematists outside the museum, resulting in the vouchering so far of ∼41,000 sequences and the production of ∼11,000 COI sequences.

Mudwhelks and mangroves: the evolutionary history of an ecological association (Gastropoda: Potamididae).

Most of the 29 living species of Potamididae show a close association with mangroves. The trees provide the snails with shelter, protection from predators, a solid substrate and sometimes food. Using sequences from three genes (nuclear 18S rRNA and 28S rRNA, mitochondrial COI) we derive a molecular phylogeny and recognize six living genera (Terebralia, Telescopium, Tympanotonos, Cerithidea, Cerithideopsis, Cerithideopsilla). The oldest modern genera (Terebralia, Cerithideopsis) appeared in the Tethyan realm in the Middle Eocene, shortly after the origin of mangrove trees. Whereas most potamidid genera are now restricted to either the Indo-West Pacific (IWP) or to the eastern Pacific plus Atlantic (EPA), sister clades of Cerithideopsis survive in both realms. Based on a reinterpretation of the fossil record (particularly of the monotypic Tympanotonos and extinct Potamides), and parsimonious reconstruction of ancestral habitats, we suggest that the living potamidids are an adaptive radiation that has always been closely associated with mangroves. The specialized tree-climbing groups Cerithidea and Cerithideopsis were independently derived from mud-dwelling ancestors. Cerithideopsilla cingulata (a species complex in the IWP) and 'Potamides' conicus (in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean) form a single clade within the genus Cerithideopsilla. This refutes the hypothesis that 'P.'conicus is the sole relict of the Tethyan Potamides that has occurred in the Mediterranean region since the Palaeocene. Instead, the phylogeny and fossil record suggest that an ancestor of Cerithideopsilla conica with planktotrophic larvae dispersed from the IWP to the Mediterranean in the Middle Miocene, that its direct development evolved in the Mediterranean during the Pliocene, and that it reinvaded the Indian Ocean during the Plio-Pleistocene.