DNA Barcoding Can Successfully Identify Penaeus monodon, Associate Life Cycle Stages, and Generate Hypotheses of Unrecognised Diversity

DNA barcoding is the technique of sequencing a short fragment of cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) mtDNA – a ‘DNA barcode’ - from a taxonomically unknown organism. This DNA barcode is then matched against a reference library of barcodes of known species origin to make a species identification. Since 2004 an international consortium has been promoting DNA barcoding as a global standard for taxonomic identifications (Savolainen et al. 2005).