Information-theoretic signatures of biodiversity in the barcoding gene

Abstract

The COI mitochondrial gene is present in all animal phyla and in a few others, and is the leading candidate for species identification through DNA barcoding. Calculating a generalized form of total correlation on publicly available data on the gene yields distinctive information-theoretic descriptors of the phyla represented in the data. Moreover, performing principal component analysis on standardized versions of these descriptors reveals a strong correlation between the first principal component and the natural logarithm of the number of known living species. The descriptors thus constitute clear information-theoretic signatures of the processes whereby evolution has given rise to current biodiversity.