eDNA Flower Project

Reports of declining insect populations show the need for standardized long-term monitoring to better understand and address the underlying causes. Molecular monitoring tools such as eDNA metabarcoding offer a non-invasive and cost-effective approach to assess biodiversity. In recent years, researchers have extracted eDNA derived from flowers to assess insects and other arthropods associated with them. This method has been shown to be capable of detecting a wide range of species and functional groups. However, numerous factors concerning the origin of the eDNA, its release by an insect and the detection probability of such low-concentrated DNA traces remain unknown. Here we show through controlled tapping of insects on flowers that the frequency of visits as well as insect behavior and morphology of species can significantly impact DNA yield and resulting species lists. We anticipate that our results can serve as a foundation for the refinement of this method, enabling a deeper understanding of the ecological factors influencing eDNA deposition on flowers and facilitating the detection of a broader range of taxa.