DNA barcoding was first applied by Carl Woese to infer phylogenetic relationships from the differences in a conserved ribosomal RNA (Woese and Fox 1977). DNA barcoding involves the use of nucleotide sequence differences in a single gene to investigate evolutionary relationships. It is a taxonomic method where a short genetic marker is used to identify it as belonging to a particular species . DNA barcoding has emerged as one of the greatest efforts to accelerate the rates of taxonomic discovery and description to meet or exceed rates of biodiversity loss. The intent of DNA barcoding is to use large-scale screening of one or a few reference genes in order to (i) assign unknown individuals to species, and (ii) enhance discovery of new species (Hebert et. al.. 2003a). The utility of barcoding relies on the assumption that genetic variation within a species is much smaller than variation between species.
