Surveys of larval diversity consistently increase biodiversity estimates when applied to poorly documented groups of marine invertebrates such as phoronids and hemichordates. However, it remains to be seen how helpful this approach is for detecting unsampled species in well‐studied groups. Echinoids represent a large, robust, well‐studied macrofauna, with low diversity and low incidence of cryptic species, making them an ideal test case for the efficacy of larval barcoding to discover diversity in such groups. We developed a reference dataset of DNA barcodes for the shallow‐water adult echinoids from both coasts of Panama and compared them to DNA sequences obtained from larvae collected primarily on the Caribbean coast of Panama. We sequenced mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) for 43 species of adult sea urchins to expand the number and coverage of sequences available in GenBank. Sequences were successfully obtained for COI and 16S ribosomal DNA from 272 larvae and assigned to 17 operational taxonomic units (OTUs): 4 from the Pacific coast of Panama, where larvae were not sampled as intensively, and 13 from the Caribbean coast. Of these 17 OTUs, 13 were identified from comparisons with our adult sequences and belonged to species well documented in these regions. Another larva was identified from comparisons with unpublished sequences in the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD) as belonging to Pseudoboletia, a genus scarcely known in the Caribbean and previously unreported in Panama. Three OTUs remained unidentified. Based on larval morphology, at least two of these OTUs appeared to be spatangoids, which are difficult to collect and whose presence often goes undetected in standard surveys of benthic diversity. Despite its ability to capture unanticipated diversity, larval sampling failed to collect some species that are locally common along the Caribbean coast of Panama, such as Leodia sexiesperforata, Diadema antillarum, and Clypeaster rosaceus.

中文翻译：

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棘皮棘鱼幼虫的DNA条码揭示了新热带棘皮类动物的隐秘多样性

当将幼虫多样性调查应用于记录不足的海洋无脊椎动物类（如披着龙骨和半透明龙眼）时，其生物多样性估计值不断增加。但是，这种方法对于检测经过仔细研究的组中的未采样物种有多么有用，还有待观察。类固醇代表了一个大型，健壮，经过充分研究的大型动物，具有较低的多样性和较低的隐性物种发生率，使其成为幼虫条形码发现此类种群多样性的理想测试案例。我们开发了来自巴拿马两个海岸的浅水成虫类棘突类动物DNA条形码的参考数据集，并将它们与主要从巴拿马加勒比海地区收集的幼虫获得的DNA序列进行了比较。我们对线粒体细胞色素C氧化酶I（COI）进行了测序。）中的43种成年海胆，以扩大GenBank中可用序列的数量和覆盖范围。成功地从272个幼虫中获得了COI和16S核糖体DNA的序列，并将其分配给17个操作分类单位（OTU）：4个来自巴拿马太平洋海岸，其中没有进行大量采样，而13个来自加勒比海海岸。在这17个OTU中，有13个是通过与我们的成年序列进行比较而确定的，属于这些区域中有据可查的物种。通过与生命条形码（BOLD）中未发布的序列进行比较，鉴定出另一个幼虫属于假性牛肝菌，在加勒比海几乎不为人所知，巴拿马以前从未报道过。三个未确认的OTU。基于幼虫的形态，这些OTU中至少有两个是类Spatangoids，很难收集，而且在底栖生物多样性的标准调查中经常无法发现它们的存在。尽管能够捕获意想不到的多样性，但幼虫采样未能收集到巴拿马加勒比海沿岸本地常见的一些物种，例如Leodia sexiesperforata，Diadema antillarum和Clypeaster rosaceus。