Aim
The Neotropics, particularly South America, holds unparalleled high
levels of species richness, when compared to other major biomes. Some
neotropical areas are hotspots of a fragmentary known diversity of
insects and are under manifest danger of biodiversity loss and climate
change. Therefore, prompt estimates methods of its diversity are
urgently required to complement slower traditional taxonomic approaches.
Despite a variety of algorithms for delimiting species through
single-locus DNA barcodes having been developed and applied for rapid
estimates of species diversity in a wide array of taxa; however,
tree-based and distance-based methods may lead to different group
assignments, either overestimating or underestimating the number of
putative species. Here, we investigate the performance of different
DNA-based species delimitation approaches for a rapid biodiversity
estimate of the diversity of Polypedilum (Chironomidae, Diptera)
in South America.