DNA Barcode Examination of Bryozoa (Class: Gymnolaemata) in Korean Seawater

DNA barcoding of Bryozoa or "moss animals" has hardly advanced and lacks reference sequences for correct species identification. To date only a small number of cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) sequences from 82 bryozoan species have been deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) GenBank and Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD). We here report COI data from 53 individual samples of 29 bryozoan species collected from Korean seawater. To our knowledge this is the single largest gathering of COI barcode data of bryozoans to date. The average genetic divergence was estimated as 23.3% among species of the same genus, 25% among genera of the same family, and 1.7% at intraspecific level with a few rare exceptions having a large difference, indicating a possibility of presence of cryptic species. Our data show that COI is a very appropriate marker for species identification of bryozoans, but does not provide enough phylogenetic information at higher taxonomic ranks. Greater effort involving larger taxon sampling for the barcode analyses is needed for bryozoan taxonomy.