Fungi associated with Scolytidae beetles- Raw sequence reads

To adapt the current molecular techniques to the context-specific characteristics of these communities, the fungal communities of 80 beetle specimens were analysed through metabarcoding. This way, the fungal communities from each of the specimens were evaluated through their DNA barcodes. For this experiment, a total of four beetle species - two of them invasive to the United Kingdom- were selected. These beetles were collected across three major British forest types (pine, spruce and oak). Their associated fungal communities were then characterised and compared using two different primer sets (ITS and LSU markers). Results included potential biases in both ITS and LSU amplifications, with generally higher amplification success and higher taxonomic resolution for the ITS primers. Both primer sets draw similar conclusions on the applied ecological analysis, but ITS have the advantage of more complete databases, which contributed to identifying target fungi, like fungal pathogens.