| Summary: | Museums and other research organizations around the world have large numbers of formalin-fixed marine invertebrates in their collections. These have the potential to be a valuable resource for molecular ecological studies, but the development of methodologies for the molecular analysis of formalin-fixed material has been slow. In this study, a hot lysis protocol accompanied by the use of a commercial DNA extraction kit has been employed for DNA recovery from archived marine nematodes, followed by PCR amplification and sequencing. In total, 25 specimens ranging from estuarine to deep sea environments were subjected to molecular analyses. Successful amplification and sequencing of the nuclear small subunit ribosomal RNA (18S rRNA) gene was achieved in all individuals. Additionally, some estuarine nematodes were tentatively identified to genus and species using a phylogenetic approach. In the future, this technique should prove to be profitable for the genetic study of a wide range of formalin-fixed marine invertebrates. © 2006 The Authors.
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