Environmental DNA metabarcoding of wild flowers reveals diverse communities of terrestrial arthropods.

摘要: Terrestrial arthropods comprise the most species-rich communities on Earth, and grassland flowers provide resources for hundreds of thousands arthropod species. Diverse ecosystems worldwide are threatened by various types environmental change, which has led to decline in diversity. At same time, monitoring diversity is time-consuming strictly dependent declining taxonomic expertise. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding complex samples demonstrated that information species compositions can be efficiently non-invasively obtained. Here, we test potential wild as a novel source eDNA. We performed eDNA from several different plant using two sets generic primers, targeting mitochondrial genes 16S rRNA COI. Our results show terrestrial leave traces they interact with. obtained at least 135 67 families 14 orders, together representing diverse ecological groups including pollinators, parasitoids, gall inducers, predators, phytophagous Arthropod clustered according data also indicate this experiment was not exhaustive, an even higher richness could approach. Overall, our demonstrate it possible obtain insects other flowers. This represents vast addressing fundamental research questions ecology, obtaining cryptic unknown plant-associated arthropods, well applied pest management or conservation endangered such pollinators.