DNA metabarcoding of mites from small soil samples: limited agreement with morphological identifications but improved results from long-read sequencing.

ABSTRACT: The characterization of soil mite (Acari) communities traditionally follows morphological identifications of specimens extracted from soil, which is a highly laborious and time-consuming process. Metabarcoding has become an increasingly utilized approach for species identification from environmental DNA (eDNA) samples, but whether the metabarcoding approaches align with the morphological identification data on soil mites has rarely been addressed. Here, we examine the congruence of soil mite communities between morphological and metabarcoding datasets. The morphological dataset was generated by extracting mite specimens from the soil samples, whereas molecular datasets represent two types of cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) amplicons produced directly from soil eDNA (from 0.2 g and 2 g

SUBMITTER: Varusk S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12548636 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature