Figure 2.

Species discrimination achieved with the SPInDel method. (a) Using a logarithmic scale, the four straight lines represent the possible number of different profiles obtained when combining lengths from hypervariable regions, considering 2, 5, 20 or 100 alleles per region. For simplicity’s sake, we assumed that each allele is sampled once and that there is independence among loci. The dotted line represents the estimated maximum number of eukaryotic species on Earth (15 million). (b) Maximum frequency of species-specific profiles observed by combining SPInDel hypervariable regions in 18 eukaryotic groups. The maximum frequency of species-specific SPInDel profiles (y-axis) is plotted for all m-combinations from a set with n hypervariable regions (x-axis), for m from 1 to n. The complete set of values for each taxonomic group can be better visualized on the Supplementary Figure S18.