Soup to Tree: The Phylogeny of Beetles Inferred by Mitochondrial Metagenomics of a Bornean Rainforest Sample.

ABSTRACT: In spite of the growth of molecular ecology, systematics and next-generation sequencing, the discovery and analysis of diversity is not currently integrated with building the tree-of-life. Tropical arthropod ecologists are well placed to accelerate this process if all specimens obtained through mass-trapping, many of which will be new species, could be incorporated routinely into phylogeny reconstruction. Here we test a shotgun sequencing approach, whereby mitochondrial genomes are assembled from complex ecological mixtures through mitochondrial metagenomics, and demonstrate how the approach overcomes many of the taxonomic impediments to the study of biodiversity. DNA from approximately 500 beetle specimens, originating from a single rainforest canopy fogging sample from Borneo, was pooled

SUBMITTER: Crampton-Platt A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4540967 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature