Prospects and challenges of implementing DNA metabarcoding for high-throughput insect surveillance.

ABSTRACT: Trap-based surveillance strategies are widely used for monitoring of invasive insect species, aiming to detect newly arrived exotic taxa as well as track the population levels of established or endemic pests. Where these surveillance traps have low specificity and capture non-target endemic species in excess of the target pests, the need for extensive specimen sorting and identification creates a major diagnostic bottleneck. While the recent development of standardized molecular diagnostics has partly alleviated this requirement, the single specimen per reaction nature of these methods does not readily scale to the sheer number of insects trapped in surveillance programmes. Consequently, target lists are often restricted to a few high-priority pests, allowing unanticipated species to avoid

SUBMITTER: Piper AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6667344 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature