Is there a single distance measurement cutoff that can be used to determine if an organism is a good species level match?
No. The species cutoff varies from genus to genus. Sometimes the species that comprise a particular genus are very closely related (i.e., low genetic distance), as with the enterics, but in other genera the species are only distantly related (i.e., high genetic distance). This makes species interpretation using only one genetic distance cutoff impossible. One must first look at the genetic distance of the unknown to its closest match and then determine if that distance is on average equal to or less than the distance that separates the known species of the particular genus.
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