Issues of under-representation in quantitative DNA metabarcoding weaken the inference about diet of the tundra vole Microtus oeconomus.

ABSTRACT: During the last decade, methods based on high-throughput sequencing such as DNA metabarcoding have opened up for a range of new questions in animal dietary studies. One of the major advantages of dietary metabarcoding resides in the potential to infer a quantitative relationship between sequence read proportions and biomass of ingested food. However, this relationship's robustness is highly dependent on the system under study, calling for case-specific assessments. Herbivorous small rodents often play important roles in the ecosystem, and the use of DNA metabarcoding for analyses of rodent diets is increasing. However, there has been no direct validation of the quantitative reliability of DNA metabarcoding for small rodents. Therefore, we used an experimental approach to assess the relatio

SUBMITTER: Neby M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8403475 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature