PAPER: Environmental DNA sampling in soil ...

Environmental DNA sampling detects between-habitat variation in soil arthropod communities, but is a poor indicator of fine-scale spatial and seasonal variation

July 2022

Hermans SM, Lear G, Buckley TR, Buckley HL 2022. Environmental DNA sampling detects between-habitat variation in soil arthropod communities, but is a poor indicator of fine-scale spatial and seasonal variation. Ecological Indicators 140: 109040.

ABSTRACT

Arthropods have been useful and important ecological indicators of environmental change, but morphological identification of key groups is labour-intensive and expertise-demanding. Molecular methods using environmental DNA (eDNA) offer high-throughput capabilities for monitoring arthropod biodiversity, though their effectiveness in detecting biodiversity variation over space and time is unclear. This study employed a standard eDNA metabarcoding approach to monitor subterranean arthropod communities in a homogeneous (pine plantation) and a heterogeneous (regenerating native woody vegetation) forest.

KEYWORDS

Biodiversity monitoring; Environmental DNA; Arthropods; Soil invertebrates; Molecular methods; Metabarcoding; Cytochrome c oxidase I (COI)