Abundant, diverse, unknown: Extreme species richness and turnover despite drastic undersampling in two closely placed tropical Malaise traps

Arthropods account for a large proportion of animal biomass and diversity in terrestrial systems, making them crucial organisms in our environments. However, still too little is known about the highly abundant and megadiverse groups that often make up the bulk of collected samples, especially in the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2023-08, Vol.18 (8), p.e0290173-e0290173
Main Authors: Chimeno, Caroline, Schmidt, Stefan, Cancian de Araujo, Bruno, Perez, Kate, von Rintelen, Thomas, Schmidt, Olga, Hamid, Hasmiandy, Pramesa Narakusumo, Raden, Balke, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Animals
Arthropods
Arthropods - genetics
Automation
Biodiversity
Biology and Life Sciences
Biomass
Clustering
Computer and Information Sciences
Datasets
DNA - genetics
DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic - methods
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Gene sequencing
Genomics
Insects
Malaise trap
Metadata
Mitochondrial DNA
Nucleotide sequence
Sampling
Species richness
Taxonomy
TRAP program
Traps
Tropical environments
Veganism
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Summary:Arthropods account for a large proportion of animal biomass and diversity in terrestrial systems, making them crucial organisms in our environments. However, still too little is known about the highly abundant and megadiverse groups that often make up the bulk of collected samples, especially in the tropics. With molecular identification techniques ever more evolving, analysis of arthropod communities has accelerated. In our study, which was conducted within the Global Malaise trap Program (GMP) framework, we operated two closely placed Malaise traps in Padang, Sumatra, for three months. We analyzed the samples by DNA barcoding and sequenced a total of more than 70,000 insect specimens. For sequence clustering, we applied three different delimitation techniques, namely RESL, ASAP, and SpeciesIdentifier, which gave similar results. Despite our (very) limited sampling in time and space, our efforts recovered more than 10,000 BINs, of which the majority are associated with "dark taxa". Further analysis indicates a drastic undersampling of both sampling sites, meaning that the true arthropod diversity at our sampling sites is even higher. Regardless of the close proximity of both Malaise traps (< 360 m), we discovered significantly distinct communities.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0290173