Monitoring insect biodiversity and comparison of sampling strategies using metabarcoding: A case study in the Yanshan Mountains, China. Issue 4 (21st April 2023) - Li, Min
Abstract: Insects are the richest and most diverse group of animals and yet there remains a lack, not only of systematic research into their distribution across some key regions of the planet, but of standardized sampling strategies for their study. The Yanshan Mountains, being the boundary range between the Inner Mongolian Plateau and the North China Plain, present an indispensable piece of the insect biodiversity puzzle: both requiring systematic study and offering opportunities for the development of standardized methodologies. This is the first use of DNA metabarcoding to survey the insect biodiversity of the Yanshan Mountains. The study focuses on differences of community composition among samples collected via different methods and from different habitat types. In total, 74 bulk samples were collected from five habitat types (scrubland, woodland, wetland, farmland and grassland) using three collection methods (sweep netting, Malaise traps and light traps). After DNA extraction, PCR amplification, sequencing and diversity analysis were performed, a total of 7427 Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) at ≥97% sequence similarity level were delimited, of which 7083 OTUs were identified as belonging to Insecta. Orthoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera and Hemiptera were found to be the dominant orders according to community composition analysis. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis based on Bray–Curtis distances revealed highly divergent estimates of insect community composition among samples differentiated by the collection method ( R = .524802, p = .001), but nonsignificant difference among samples differentiated according to habitat ( R = .051102, p = .078). The study therefore appears to indicate that the concurrent use of varied collection methods is essential to the accurate monitoring of insect biodiversity. Abstract : We successfully obtained the insect community composition of Yanshan Mountains at the order, family and genus level, using the target of COI gene and Illumina high‐throughput sequencing. Three collection methods (sweep netting, Malaise traps and light traps) were used to collect insects, and a total of 74 bulk samples were acquired from five habitats (scrubland, woodland, wetland, farmland and grassland). The analysis of alpha and beta diversity showed significant differences in the composition of insect communities obtained by the three different sampling methods, implying that future biodiversity assessment could be use above three collection methods concurrently.