ENZYME VARIATION AND TAXONOMY - ESTIMATION OF SAMPLING ERRORS IN MEASUREMENTS OF INTERSPECIFIC GENETIC SIMILARITY

The uses of biochemical genetics as an aid to taxonomy are discussed briefly. A survey is made of published data to establish expected levels of genetic similarity or identity between conspecific populations, between congeneric species and between species of different genera. Existing measures of genetic similarity, identity or distance are discussed and some of the difficulties involved in their use in taxonomy are outlined. A new measure of genetic similarity is proposed specifically designed for use in making interspecific comparisons for taxonomic purposes. This measure offers considerable advantages in ease of calculation and also greatly simplifies the estimation of sampling errors. An empirical comparison is made, using published data, of the measures and confidence limits obtained by the proposed memod against published measures of genetic variation between species. Copyright © 1979, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved