Biological Scientist IV - SES Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Gainesville, Florida
Anastrepha is the most species-rich genus of trypetine fruit flies, comprising several economic species. The immatures of most Anastrepha species are undescribed and males of some species are unidentifiable. To aid in identification of Anastrepha species, a COI barcode dataset was developed. The COI barcode reference dataset contains approximately 2,300 sequences representing about 280 species of Anastrepha. Larval Anastrepha specimens were identified using the R statistical package BarcodingR. BarcodingR uses back-propagated neural networks, fuzzy-set mathematics, and Bayesian clustering to provide consensus identifications of larval specimens. Additionally, the existence of a “barcode gap” was evaluated for each Anastrepha species in the COI dataset. Our results confirm patterns observed in previous studies, indicating that many Anastrepha species are reliably identifiable using COI barcodes. However, species in the Anastrepha fraterculus species group can not be identified with COI barcodes.
