Species Delimitation and Analysis of Cryptic Species Diversity in the XXI Century

Abstract

The potentials and limitations of different approaches to revealing species boundaries and describing cryptic species are discussed. Both the traditional methods of species delimitation, mostly based on morphological analysis, and the approaches using molecular markers are considered. Besides, the prospects of species identification using digital image recognition and machine learning are briefly considered. It is concluded that molecular markers provide very important material for species delimitation; the value of these data increases manifold if they can be compared with information on morphology, geographic distribution, and ecological preferences of the studied taxa. In many cases, only a practicing taxonomist who knows his or her group thoroughly can correctly interpret the molecular data and incorporate them into the existing knowledge system in order to make a taxonomic decision.