Monitoring biodiversity and detection of diverse vertebrate species with mosquito blood meal analysis at the DeLuca Preserve, Florida, USA.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity monitoring is essential to conservation, yet field surveys are expensive, labor-intensive, and require substantial taxonomic expertise. DNA-based approaches are increasingly implemented to indirectly detect the presence of species at diverse types of field sites. In terrestrial ecosystems, invertebrate-derived DNA (iDNA) has potential to contribute to monitoring efforts that aim to characterize the diversity of vertebrate communities or to detect the presence of vertebrate species. We investigated the feasibility of using mosquito blood meals to detect vertebrate animals, focusing on the diversity of species detected by mosquitoes collectively and by individual species. Mosquitoes were collected at the DeLuca Preserve, Osceola County, Florida, USA over an eight-month period us

SUBMITTER: Atsma H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12727878 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature