eDNA metabarcoding of avocado flowers: ‘Hass’ it got potential to survey arthropods in food production systems?

In the face of global biodiversity declines, surveys of beneficial and antagonistic arthropod diversity as well as the ecological services that they provide are increasingly important in both natural and agro-ecosystems. Conventional survey methods used to monitor these communities often require extensive taxonomic expertise and are time-intensive, potentially limiting their application in industries such as agriculture, where arthropods often play a critical role in productivity (e.g. pollinators, pests and predators). Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding of a novel substrate, crop flowers, may offer an accurate and high throughput alternative to aid in the detection managed and unmanaged arthropod taxa (e.g. flower-visiting insects and potential pollinators). Here, we compared the arthropod communities detected with eDNA metabarcoding of flowers, from an agricultural species (Persea americana - ‘Hass’ avocado), with two conventional survey techniques; Digital Video Recording (DVR) d..., For this study, inflorescences were collected from a Persea americana (‘Hass’ Avocado) orchard, Marron Brook Farm (34°18′52 S, 116°08′36 E), located in the avocado production region of Manjimup-Pemberton in south-west Western Australia (SWWA) (Mccarthy & McCauley, 2020). DVRs and pan trap sampling were carried out at the same time that inflorescence were collected from the study orchard. For each sample tree, ten P. americana inflorescences were removed for eDNA analysis during the peak P. americana flowering season in 2020 (October 30th and 31st). For eDNA analysis, five inflorescences were collected from both the upper (> 2 m) and lower canopy (< 2 m) of each P. americana tree (N = 10 inflorescences per tree, N = 80 inflorescence total) between the 30th and 31st of October 2020, both days were sunny with low winds and no rain. Six inflorescences were collected from each tree on the 30th of October (three upper canopy, three lower canopy) and four inflorescences (two upper ca..., , ## eDNA metabarcoding of avocado flowers: Hass it got potential to survey arthropods in food production systems?

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Dataset contains 80 inflorescence samples collected from Marron Brook Farm in south west Western Australia. These inflorescences were extracted using the DNeasy Blood and Tissue Kit to collect insect eDNA and targeted using two PCR assays: fwhF2/fwhR2n (Vamos et al., 2017), targeting the CO1 gene, herein referred to as CO1, and assay Ins_16S_shortF/Ins_16S_shortR (Clarke et al., 2014), targeting the 16S ribosomal subunit gene, herein referred to as 16S. The forward primer sequence for CO1 was 5-GGDACWGGWTGAACWGTWTAYCCHCC-3 and reverse primer sequence 5-GTRATWGCHCCDGCTARWACWGG-3. The forward sequence for 16S was 5-TRRGACGAGAAGACCCTATA-3 and reverse sequence 5- ACGCTGTTATCCCTAAGGTA-3. Amplicons for each assay were ~205 bp and ~167 bp for CO1 and 16S, respectively.

## Description of the data and file structure

Three barcode files; two for CO1 and one for 16S.
NTC = Non-T...