Praying Mantis’s around Virginia

Kevin Otto
James Madison University

Introduction Results Results

Table 1. Top 7-10 BLAST matches arranged by bit score (query date: 11JUL2016)
•Biodiversity is dwindling at an alarming
rate (Herbert et al. 2003), yet we still
don’t know all the species that are present
even in our back yards.

•DNA barcoding identifies organisms

based on DNA sequences and sequence
databases, enabling novices to ID local
organisms and catalogue biodiversity
(Herbert et al. 2003).
Table 2. Summary of taxonomic identification data
Figure 3. Range map of best
Figure 2. Organism photo(s) taken Technique Best supported taxonomic ID(s)
match: Praying Mantis
26 September 2016 at James Madison (Praying_Mantis-Mantodea) BLAST Praying_Mantis-Mantodea

Goal University Arboretum. MUSCLE (%

similarity)
Praying_Mantis-Mantodea

NJ Tree Praying_Mantis-Mantodea
The goal of this study was to ML Tree Praying_Mantis-Mantodea
identify an organism present in the Morphology (photos) Matches Praying_Mantis-Mantodea features
JMU arboretum to help document Range Map Matches Praying_Mantis-Mantodea range
the biodiversity of JMU. FINAL TAXONOMIC Praying_Mantis-Mantodea
ID

AGV321 PREMIX AGV321 15 AGV AGV321 PREMIX AGV321 15 AGV Summary

Interpretation of DNA subway results
• Your sequence: My sequence was pretty good and it was 683 long. It is
Methods reliable.
• BLAST. I am confident in my ID because it had a high bit score (967)
which means that it is closely related to that species. Also there were
only 46 mismatches and the alignment length was 651
Figure 4. PHYLIP NJ tree of unknown sample Figure 5. PHYLIP ML tree of unknown sample • MUSCLE: I am confident in this ID because there percents were within
(blue box) top 7-10 taxonomically unique (blue box) top 7-10 taxonomically unique BLAST one percent of each other.
BLAST hits and outgroup (red text). hits and outgroup (red text). • NJ TREE: This tree best supports the identification down to a genus level
because there are a couple branches that come before mine that my
specimen has in common with other species.
• ML TREE: This tree specifies my specimen all the way to the species
because it filters out all the other species and ends with my specimen and
another one like it.
Taxonomy of specimen
• I can only be confident enough to predict what genus that my species is
in. There is not enough information to tell me what species my specimen
is a part of.
• I do not believe that there is any morphological features that separate my
species at this level.
Biodiversity
• Yes this is a new Species that hasn’t yet been added to the Bio 140
Figure 6. Trimmed MUSCLE alignment of the unknown sequence (highlighted) the top 3 taxonomically unique
database.
Figure 1. Steps for DNA barcoding Blast hits, and 7 from common reference data. Colored vertical lines indicate sequence polymorphism. Details
References
listed under public DNA subway project – Hyman_FA16 BIO140_4018, project ID 83486.
Herbert, P., Cywinsky, A., Ball, S., and deWaard, J. (2003). Biological Identifications through DNA Barcodes. Proc. Roy. Soc. B. 270:313-321.