we find that in few cases the 175 bp fragment was little more efficient in species identification as evident from higher similarity scores (Fig. 1) suggesting this marker outside the barcode region as equally informative for species identification. Further, it was advantageous to use this fragment as it could be recovered from diminished quantities of DNA (obtained from shed skin samples and from samples exposed to a high temperature of 70 8C for 5 h in the validation study).