RESEARCH ARTICLE Fast Census of Moth Diversity in the Neotropics: A Comparison of Field-Assigned Morphospecies and DNA Barcoding in Tiger Moths Mauricio M. Zenker1*, Rodolphe Rougerie2, José A. Teston3, Michel Laguerre2, Marcio R. Pie4, André V. L. Freitas1 1 Departamento de Biologia Animal, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas- SP, Brazil, 2 Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle, Sorbonne Universités, Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité (ISYEB), UMR7205 – CNRS, UPMC, EPHE, Paris, France, 3 Laboratório de Estudos de Lepidópteros Neotropicais and Programa de Pós-Graduação em Recursos Naturais da Amazônia, Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará, Santarém, PA, Brazil, 4 Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba-PR, Brazil *
[email protected] OPEN ACCESS Citation: Zenker MM, Rougerie R, Teston JA, Laguerre M, Pie MR, Freitas AVL (2016) Fast Census Abstract of Moth Diversity in the Neotropics: A Comparison of Field-Assigned Morphospecies and DNA Barcoding The morphological species delimitations (i.e. morphospecies) have long been the best way in Tiger Moths. PLoS ONE 11(2): e0148423. to avoid the taxonomic impediment and compare insect taxa biodiversity in highly diverse doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148423 tropical and subtropical regions. The development of DNA barcoding, however, has shown Editor: Roberta Cimmaruta, Tuscia University, ITALY great potential to replace (or at least complement) the morphospecies approach, with the Received: September 26, 2015 advantage of relying on automated methods implemented in computer programs or even online rather than in often subjective morphological features. We sampled moths exten- Accepted: January 18, 2016 sively for two years using light traps in a patch of the highly endangered Atlantic Forest of Published: February 9, 2016 Brazil to produce a nearly complete census of arctiines (Noctuoidea: Erebidae), whose spe- Copyright: © 2016 Zenker et al.