Determining plant-leaf miner-parasitoid interactions: a DNA barcoding approach.

ABSTRACT: A major challenge in network ecology is to describe the full-range of species interactions in a community to create highly-resolved food-webs. We developed a molecular approach based on DNA full barcoding and mini-barcoding to describe difficult to observe plant-leaf miner-parasitoid interactions, consisting of animals commonly regarded as agricultural pests and their natural enemies. We tested the ability of universal primers to amplify the remaining DNA inside leaf miner mines after the emergence of the insect. We compared the results of a) morphological identification of adult specimens; b) identification based on the shape of the mines; c) the COI Mini-barcode (130 bp) and d) the COI full barcode (658 bp) fragments to accurately identify the leaf-miner species. We used the molecular ap

SUBMITTER: Derocles SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4339730 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature