Different polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based techniques which use s
ingle primers of arbitrary sequence have become prominent and powerful
tools for taxonomic and genealogical studies. While the use of arbitr
arily amplified DNA (AAD) markers for the identification of lower taxo
nomic units (e.g. at the species level) has been proven to be more or
less straightforward, their potential usefulness in phylogenetic studi
es 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 generating high numbers of AAD markers in short time. On the o
ther hand, the generation of AAD markers is susceptible to certain ran
dom and systematic errors, and for phylogenetic studies the taxonomic
level at which informative markers can be generated is severely limite
d.