A DNA library to investigate animal diet shifts with prairie restoration and global change

Plant-animal interactions are the base of terrestrial food webs, with plants supporting most animal life and animals helping plants carry pollen and disperse seeds. However, field observation of these interactions is cumbersome and rarely investigated at the community level. To address this gap, a plant barcode reference library has been sequenced for American Prairie, specifically a shortgrass prairie in eastern Montana.This is the target region of a young Smithsonian program and the focus of large-scale grassland restoration and re-wilding efforts. The reference library will be the base of future investigations of plant-insect interaction networks and ungulate diets. This NCBI BioProject contains DNA barcode records that were generated with support from the federally-funded Smithsonian Institution Barcode Network (FY22).