Filling knowledge gaps in insect conservation by leveraging genetic data from public archives

Based on data collection from NCBI GenBank and BOLD, we edited a georeferenced database of barcoding data for the insect taxa within the Italian IUCN Red Lists: saproxylic beetles, butterflies, bees, and dragonflies.

The goal of this database is to support the estimation of the genetic diversity of the listed insect species. The database populated with barcoding sequences and additional metadata will allow studies in order to define biodiversity pattern models in Italy and Europe.

Our database allows recycling and re-analysing data from two major repositories such as NCBI GenBank and BOLD, increasing accessibility to big data for comparative study to facilitate genetic and spatial analyses on a large scale. Our findings suggest to fill many gaps in the knowledge of species occurrence, distribution, and patterns of genetic diversity for insects in Europe.