Uncovering Trophic Interactions in Arthropod Predators through DNA Shotgun-Sequencing of Gut Contents.

ABSTRACT: Characterizing trophic networks is fundamental to many questions in ecology, but this typically requires painstaking efforts, especially to identify the diet of small generalist predators. Several attempts have been devoted to develop suitable molecular tools to determine predatory trophic interactions through gut content analysis, and the challenge has been to achieve simultaneously high taxonomic breadth and resolution. General and practical methods are still needed, preferably independent of PCR amplification of barcodes, to recover a broader range of interactions. Here we applied shotgun-sequencing of the DNA from arthropod predator gut contents, extracted from four common coccinellid and dermapteran predators co-occurring in an agroecosystem in Brazil. By matching unassembled reads ag

SUBMITTER: Paula DP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5021305 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature