The effect of ethanol concentration on the morphological and molecular preservation of insects for biodiversity studies.

ABSTRACT: Traditionally, insects collected for scientific purposes have been dried and pinned, or preserved in 70% ethanol. Both methods preserve taxonomically informative exoskeletal structures well but are suboptimal for preserving DNA for molecular biology. Highly concentrated ethanol (95-100%), preferred as a DNA preservative, has generally been assumed to make specimens brittle and prone to breaking. However, systematic studies on the correlation between ethanol concentration and specimen preservation are lacking. Here, we tested how preservative ethanol concentration in combination with different sample handling regimes affect the integrity of seven insect species representing four orders, and differing substantially in the level of sclerotization. After preservation and treatments (various le

SUBMITTER: Marquina D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7883690 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature