Mr Joshua Kestel1,2,3, Dr Bill Bateman1,2, Dr Nicole White1,2, Dr David Field3, Dr Paul Nevill1,2
1Curtin University, Perth, Australia, 2Trend Laboratory, Perth, Australia, 3Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia
Biodiversity surveys are necessary for assessing insect diversity as well as the ecological services that they provide in food production systems in the face of global insect declines. Such surveys rely upon direct observations and collections that are often laborious and require extensive taxonomic expertise. Alternative methods such as environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding may offer an accurate and high-throughput alternative. For over a decade metabarcoding has been applied to target both terrestrial and aquatic eDNA, although there remains much potential to expand applications of this technology to new substrates, such as flowers to measure trace deposits of animal visitor DNA. Here, we compared the insect communities detected with floral eDNA, obtained from an agricultural species, with two traditional survey techniques; cameras and pan traps. Two eDNA assays were used targeting both Cytochrome Oxidase 1 and 16S large ribosomal subunit. In total, 80 eDNA flower samples, 96 hours of camera footage showing 14,032 flower visits, and 48 pan trap samples containing 499 insects were collected. Across the three methods, 40 insect families were identified (eDNA N = 22; cameras N = 17; pan traps N = 20), of which 9 were unique to the eDNA dataset. Alpha diversity levels did not differ significantly across the three surveys although the insect families were distinct for each method. This study demonstrated how floral eDNA can be used to detect insect taxa and provides a valuable comparison to traditional methods for biodiversity surveys and the classification of flower-visiting insects in natural and agro-ecosystems.
Biography:
My area of interest is in pollination biology, specifically, the genetic consequences of different animal vectors for the plants they pollinate. I completed my Bachelor of Science majoring in botany and genetics at the University of Western Australia (UWA). Subsequently, I undertook my Honours research project with UWA and Kings Park Science examining bird pollination of the common catspaw (Anigozanthos humilis subsp. humilis). Now I have commenced my PhD using environmental DNA metabarcoding to examine plant-pollinator networks in avocado orchards in south west Western Australia.