Metabarcoding arthropods in agroecosystems in Southern Ontario, Canada

2025/06/19 by Dirk Steinke, Kate Perez, Sean W. J. Prosser +8 · 2 voices
Environmental Science · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies #Species Distribution and Climate Change #Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Studies

paper · pdf · doi:10.3897/bdj.13.e158459

openalex publication_date 2025/06/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02

Abstract

Background: Metabarcoding can generate large numbers of georeferenced occurrence data from bulk samples at low cost. Its integration into the practice of agricultural invertebrate biomonitoring currently lacks both standard methods and example datasets that allow the identification of potential challenges and uncertainties. New information: For this study, we gathered metabarcoding data of terrestrial arthropods from Malaise trap samples across sites in southern Ontario, spanning a gradient from high production, intensely farmed areas to alternative land use farms with varying amounts of natural restoration of marginal lands. The result is one of the largest datasets available for comparison of how agricultural practices influence arthropod biodiversity.

Citations

• The recent declines of farmland bird populations in Britain: an appraisal of causal factors and conservation actions
• Rarefaction and extrapolation with Hill numbers: a framework for sampling and estimation in species diversity studies
• More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
• Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web
• Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers
• Agricultural intensification and climate change are rapidly decreasing insect biodiversity
• Metabarcoding advances agricultural invertebrate biomonitoring by enhancing resolution, increasing throughput and facilitating network inference

Discussions

• #Biodiversity #informatics has long ignored #agricultural biodiversity but this new paper doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.... makes use of metabarcoding tools to crack this door open 🧪. #agroecosystems are #ecos [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• A comprehensive study utilising arthropod metabarcoding to assess biodiversity across varied agricultural landscapes in Southern Ontario, Canada. #biodiversity #pests #pollinators doi.org/10.3897/BD [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

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