Profiling, monitoring and conserving caterpillar fungus in the Himalayan region using anchored hybrid enrichment markers.

ABSTRACT: The collection of caterpillar fungus accounts for 50-70% of the household income of thousands of Himalayan communities and has an estimated market value of $5-11 billion across Asia. However, Himalayan collectors are at multiple economic disadvantages compared with collectors on the Tibetan Plateau because their product is not legally recognized. Using a customized hybrid-enrichment probe set and market-grade caterpillar fungus (with samples up to 30 years old) from 94 production zones across Asia, we uncovered clear geography-based signatures of historical dispersal and significant isolation-by-distance among caterpillar fungus hosts. This high-throughput approach can readily distinguish samples from major production zones with definitive geographical resolution, especially for samples fr

SUBMITTER: Wang Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9043734 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature