The lack of obvious morphological differences between species impedes the identification of species in many groups of organisms. Meanwhile, DNA-based approaches are increasingly used to survey biological diversity. In this study we show that sequencing the mitochondrial protein-coding gene NADH dehydrogenase, subunit 1 (nd1) from 534 bats of the Western Palaearctic region corroborates the promise of DNA barcodes in two major respects. First, species described with classical taxonomic tools can be genetically identified with only a few exceptions. Second, substantial sequence divergence suggests an unexpected high number of undiscovered species.

中文翻译：

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分子种类识别可提高蝙蝠的多样性。

物种之间缺乏明显的形态学差异，阻碍了许多生物体中物种的鉴定。同时，基于DNA的方法越来越多地用于调查生物多样性。在这项研究中，我们显示了对来自西古北地区534蝙蝠的线粒体蛋白质编码基因NADH脱氢酶亚基1（nd1）的测序在两个主要方面证实了DNA条码的前景。首先，只有少数例外情况可以通过遗传学方法鉴定用经典分类学工具描述的物种。其次，大量的序列差异表明出乎意料的大量未发现物种。