Well, it looks as if Bembidion (Plataphus) curtulatum is at least three species. The above bits of DNA show parts of 28S ribosomal DNA. Of the 950 bases that were sequenced, this shows only those sites that differ from one specimen to the next, and at which there is no variation within any of the individual specimens’ copies of the gene. As you can see, the specimens from Montana and Idaho differ quite a bit from the other beetles, and the specimen from Alberta is different yet again. And the number of differences observed are enough to suggest they are different species. It will be interesting to see what the other genes say, and whether there are correlated characters in the pronotum, microsculpture, and male genitalia of the beetles. I’ll report back on that after I check.
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What do the nucleotides in lower case signify? (one on OR 1, most of OR 2)
That just means the bases are slightly less confidently determined. More specifically, the “quality” score of the lower case bases was less than a specified amount, as judged by Phrap.
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