Meeting Abstract
Marine biodiversity is poorly documented, particularly the diversity of invertebrate phyla and tropical taxa. In the few cases where it has been employed, DNA barcoding has proved to be an effective tool for detecting taxa which have not been reported as adults from the sampling location. Larval barcoding may be a particularly effective way to sample species with either cryptic or infaunal, soft-bodied adults that may be difficult to collect, as well as those that live in habitats that are difficult to access. Larval barcoding of hemichordates, lophophorates, sipunculans and nemerteans using COI and 16S recovered considerably more species than expected from the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of Panama. In some but not all cases the species can be distinguished on the basis of larval morphology. Few of the species can be assigned to named species from comparisons with sequences in BoLD or GenBank, emphasizing the need for greater effort to sample the benthic soft bodied fauna of the region.
