The article "Identification of Birds through DNA Barcodes" by Paul D. N. Hebert, Mark Y. Stoeckle, Tyler S. Zemlak, and Charles M. Francis explores the use of DNA barcodes to identify bird species. The authors focus on the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene region, which is known for its high sequence divergence among closely related species. They sequenced the COI gene for 260 North American bird species and found that each species had a unique COI barcode, with differences between closely related species being significantly higher than within species. This study identified four probable new bird species and confirmed the effectiveness of COI barcodes for species identification. The authors propose a standard threshold of 10 times the mean intraspecific variation as a screening tool for identifying new species. The article highlights the potential of DNA barcodes to revolutionize species identification, particularly in avian biology, and suggests that a comprehensive library of COI sequences linked to named specimens could serve as a new master key for species identification.The article "Identification of Birds through DNA Barcodes" by Paul D. N. Hebert, Mark Y. Stoeckle, Tyler S. Zemlak, and Charles M. Francis explores the use of DNA barcodes to identify bird species. The authors focus on the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene region, which is known for its high sequence divergence among closely related species. They sequenced the COI gene for 260 North American bird species and found that each species had a unique COI barcode, with differences between closely related species being significantly higher than within species. This study identified four probable new bird species and confirmed the effectiveness of COI barcodes for species identification. The authors propose a standard threshold of 10 times the mean intraspecific variation as a screening tool for identifying new species. The article highlights the potential of DNA barcodes to revolutionize species identification, particularly in avian biology, and suggests that a comprehensive library of COI sequences linked to named specimens could serve as a new master key for species identification.