Morphology is not always useful for diagnosis, and that's ok: Species hypotheses should not be bound to a class of data. Reply to Brown and Gibbons (S Afr J Sci. 2022;118(9/10), Art. #12590)

This paper serves as a reply to the Commentary by Brown and Gibbons (S Afr J Sci. 2022;118(9/10), Art. #12590) on our recently published paper on systematics of the moon jellyfish genus Aurelia (Lawley et al. PeerJ 2021;9, e11954)). We emphasise that we are not advocating for the routine use of mole...

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Published in:South African Journal of Science 2022-09, Vol.118 (9-10), p.26-28
Main Authors: Lawley, Jonathan W., Gamero-Mora, Edgar, Maronna, Maximiliano M., Chiaverano, Luciano M., Stampar, Sérgio N., Hopcroft, Russell R., Collins, Allen G., Morandini, André C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autonomous underwater vehicles
Cryptic species
Hypotheses
Jellyfish
Morphology
Names
Species delimitation
Systematics
Taxonomy
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Summary:This paper serves as a reply to the Commentary by Brown and Gibbons (S Afr J Sci. 2022;118(9/10), Art. #12590) on our recently published paper on systematics of the moon jellyfish genus Aurelia (Lawley et al. PeerJ 2021;9, e11954)). We emphasise that we are not advocating for the routine use of molecular data alone in taxonomic diagnoses, rather that it is a valid approach in cases where, after detailed analyses, morphological features are shown to be unreliable. We thank Brown and Gibbons1 for commenting on our work2, and also the South African Journal of Science for providing us open space to debate ideas and points of view that deserve discussion. Brown and Gibbons1 are concerned that adopting the approach we recently took in advancing systematics of moon jellyfish in the genus Aurelia Lamarck, 18163 might lead to 'fleets of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) moving around the world's oceans throwing out new species descriptions on a regular basis using on-board molecular technologies that link to land-based supercomputers by satellite feeds'1. While we do agree with the authors' sentiment that AUV-based eDNA monitoring would help build understanding of molecular diversity, we would not want our approach to be seen as justification that new species could or should be created based on such sampling efforts. We do not advocate for such an idea, and indeed our paper concludes by suggesting that more investigation of morphological characters is needed to fully understand diversification in Aurelia. Brown and Gibbons1 state that we relied on molecular markers alone in our approach tackling the systematics of Aurelia, but this is not the case. They omitted our detailed analysis of 40 morphological characters from 173 specimens, either freshly collected or preserved in museum collections, which follows the standard that has been adopted for Aurelia for the past 20 years (mostly based on Dawson4 and used since in most studies that address Aurelia morphology5-7). Some of the preserved specimens analysed had been previously identified to species level by their collectors, but after our analyses, many of the relevant characters used for those identifications overlapped across distinct localities, where the proposed species were not known to occur. Two such examples are Aurelia labiata Chamisso & Eysenhardt, 18218 and Aurelia limbata Brandt, 18359. Both species were first described around 200 years ago and their morphological diagnoses overall seemed to withstan
ISSN:0038-2353
1996-7489
DOI:10.17159/sajs.2022/14495