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Arbitrarily amplified DNA in systematics and phylogenetics

Different polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based techniques which use single primers of arbitrary sequence have become prominent and powerful tools for taxonomic and genealogical studies. While the use of arbitrarily amplified DNA (AAD) markers for the identification of lower taxonomic units (e.g. at the species level) has been proven to be more or less straightforward, their potential usefulness in phylogenetic studies has not been sufficiently addressed yet. The main advantages of AAD markers include that they require only very small amounts of DNA, no sequence information of the taxa under investigation and the relative ease of the generating high numbers of AAD markers in short time. On the other hand, the generation of AAD markers is susceptible to certain random and systematic errors, and for phylogenetic studies the taxonomic level at which informative markers can be generated is severely limited.