Rank-Based Characterization of Pollen Assemblages Collected by Honey Bees Using a Multi-Locus Metabarcoding Approach

Premise of the study: Difficulties inherent in microscopic pollen identification have resulted in limited implementation for large-scale studies. Metabarcoding, a relatively novel approach, could make pollen analysis less onerous; however, improved understanding of the quantitative capacity of vario...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applications in plant sciences 2015-11, Vol.3 (11), p.n/a
Main Authors: Richardson, Rodney T, Lin, Chia-Hua, Quijia, Juan O, Riusech, Natalia S, Goodell, Karen, Johnson, Reed M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Apis mellifera
barcoding
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
DNA primers
Fraxinus
Homogenization
honey bees
Identification
internal transcribed spacers
Library collections
light microscopy
loci
matK
molecular palynology
Palynology
Plant sciences
Plastids
Pollen
pollen plastid biology
PROTOCOL NOTES
rbcL
Software
Taxonomy
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Summary:Premise of the study: Difficulties inherent in microscopic pollen identification have resulted in limited implementation for large-scale studies. Metabarcoding, a relatively novel approach, could make pollen analysis less onerous; however, improved understanding of the quantitative capacity of various plant metabarcode regions and primer sets is needed to ensure that such applications are accurate and precise. Methods and Results: We applied metabarcoding, targeting the ITS2, matK, and rbcL loci, to characterize six samples of pollen collected by honey bees, Apis mellifera. Additionally, samples were analyzed by light microscopy. We found significant rank-based associations between the relative abundance of pollen types within our samples as inferred by the two methods. Conclusions: Our findings suggest metabarcoding data from plastid loci, as opposed to the ribosomal locus, are more reliable for quantitative characterization of pollen assemblages. Furthermore, multilocus metabarcoding of pollen may be more reliable than single-locus analyses, underscoring the need for discovering novel barcodes and barcode combinations optimized for molecular palynology.
ISSN:2168-0450
2168-0450
DOI:10.3732/apps.1500043