Data from: Integrative taxonomy at work: DNA barcoding of taeniids harbored by wild and domestic cats

In modern taxonomy, DNA barcoding is particularly useful where biometric parameters are difficult to determine or useless due to the poor quality of samples. These situations are frequent in parasitology. Here we present an integrated study, based on both DNA barcoding and morphological analysis, on cestodes belonging to the genus Taenia, for which biodiversity is still largely underestimated. In particular, we characterized cestodes from Italian wildcats (Felis silvestris silvestris), free-ranging domestic cats (F. s. catus) and their hybrids populations. Adult taeniids were collected by post-mortem examinations of the hosts, and morphologically identified as Taenia taeniaeformis. We produced the cox1 barcode sequences for all the analyzed specimens and we compared them with reference sequences of individuals belonging to the genus Taenia retrieved from GenBank. In order to evaluate the performance of a DNA barcoding approach to discriminate these parasites, the strength of correlation between species identification based on classical morphology-based approaches and the molecular divergence of cox1 sequences was measured. Our study provides clear evidence that DNA barcoding is highly efficient to reveal the presence of cryptic lineages within already described taeniid species. Indeed, we detected three well-defined molecular lineages within the whole panel of specimens morphologically identified as T. taeniaeformis. Two of these molecular groups were already identified by other authors and should be ranked at species level. The third molecular group encompasses only samples collected in Italy during this study, and it represents a third candidate species, still morphologically undescribed.在现代分类学中，DNA条形码（DNA barcoding）在因样本质量不佳导致生物特征参数难以测定或完全无效的场景中尤为实用。这类场景在寄生虫学领域尤为常见。本研究针对带绦虫属（Taenia）的绦虫开展整合研究，结合DNA条形码与形态学分析方法——该属的生物多样性目前仍被大幅低估。具体而言，本研究对意大利野猫（Felis silvestris silvestris）、散养家猫（F. s. catus）及其杂交种群携带的绦虫进行了特征分析。通过对宿主进行尸检采集成虫带绦虫，并经形态学鉴定为猫带绦虫（Taenia taeniaeformis）。本研究为所有受试样本制备了细胞色素c氧化酶亚基1（cox1）条形码序列，并将其与从GenBank中获取的带绦虫属参考序列进行比对。为评估DNA条形码方法对这类寄生虫的区分效能，本研究测定了基于经典形态学方法的物种鉴定结果与cox1序列分子分化程度之间的关联强度。本研究明确证实，DNA条形码可高效揭示已报道带绦虫物种内存在的隐秘演化支（cryptic lineages）。具体而言，在全部经形态学鉴定为T. taeniaeformis的样本中，本研究共检测到3个界限清晰的分子支系。其中2个分子类群已被其他学者鉴定，且应被归类为独立物种。第三个分子类群仅包含本研究在意大利采集的样本，代表了第3个候选物种，其形态学特征尚未被描述。