Efficient assessment of nocturnal flying insect communities by combining automatic light traps and DNA metabarcoding

ABSTRACT: Increasing evidence for global insect declines is prompting a renewed interest in the survey of whole insect communities. DNA metabarcoding can contribute to assessing diverse insect communities over a range of spatial and temporal scales, but efforts are still needed to optimise and standardise procedures. Here we describe and test a methodological pipeline for surveying nocturnal flying insects, combining automatic light traps and DNA metabarcoding. We optimised laboratory procedures and then tested the methodological pipeline using 12 field samples collected in northern Portugal in 2017. We focused on Lepidoptera to compare metabarcoding results with those from morphological identification, using three types of bulk samples produced from each field sample (individuals, legs and the unso

ORGANISM(S): Arthropoda

SUBMITTER: Vanessa A. Mata 

PROVIDER: S-BSST454 | biostudies-other |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other