Determining plant – leaf miner – parasitoid interactions: a DNA barcoding approach

A major challenge in network ecology is to describe the full-range of species interactions in a community to create highly-resolved food-webs. We developed a molecular approach based on DNA full barcoding and mini-barcoding to describe difficult to observe plant – leaf miner – parasitoid interactions, consisting of animals commonly regarded as agricultural pests and their natural enemies. We tested the ability of universal primers to amplify the remaining DNA inside leaf miner mines after the emergence of the insect. We compared the results of a) morphological identification of adult specimens; b) identification based on the shape of the mines; c) the COI Mini-barcode (130 bp) and d) the COI full barcode (658 bp) fragments to accurately identify the leaf-miner species. We used the molecular approach to build and analyse a tri-partite ecological network of plant – leaf miner – parasitoid interactions. We were able to detect the DNA of leaf-mining insects within their feeding mines on a r...

网络生态学领域的核心挑战之一，在于完整刻画群落内的全部物种互作关系，以构建高分辨率的食物网。本研究开发了一种基于DNA全条形码与微型条形码的分子检测方法，用以解析难以直接观测的植物-潜叶昆虫-寄生性天敌三级互作关系——此类类群多为公认的农业害虫及其自然天敌。我们验证了通用引物在昆虫羽化后，仍可扩增潜叶虫虫道内残留DNA的能力。我们通过四种方案对比验证了潜叶昆虫物种的精准鉴定效果：a) 成虫标本的形态学鉴定；b) 基于虫道形态的鉴定；c) 细胞色素C氧化酶亚基I（COI）微型条形码（130 bp）片段鉴定；d) COI全条形码（658 bp）片段鉴定。本研究利用该分子方法，构建并分析了植物-潜叶昆虫-寄生性天敌的三级互作生态网络。我们成功从寄主植物的潜叶虫道内检测到潜叶昆虫的DNA，相关研究[原文此处截断为“a r...”]