Data from: Dietary overlap of sympatric polyphagous alpine grasshoppers includes invasive plant species

We performed gut content analysis of three alpine grasshopper
species—Sigaus nitidus, Sigaus nivalis, and Sigaus australis—collected
from three alpine regions in New Zealand, using chloroplast DNA markers.
First, we assessed the taxonomic resolution of the trnL and rbcL markers
using 12 gut samples from Mount Hutt. We then analysed diet composition
across species, sexes, and locations using 28 samples from three sites
(Mount Hutt, Craigieburn Range, and Foggy Peak) with the trnL marker. The
dataset includes raw sequence files (FastQ) and amplicon sequence variants
(ASVs) classified as plant taxa (Viridiplantae: Streptophyta), comprising
112 rbcL and 328 trnL ASVs. ASVs were generated using the DADA2 pipeline
in QIIME2 and identified via a custom reference database using the QIIME2
BLAST+ algorithm. The trnL marker revealed higher taxonomic diversity (23
genera, 2 species), compared to 17 genera and 2 species identified using
rbcL. To further refine species-level identifications, trnL sequences with
100% pairwise identity were additionally compared against the NCBI
nucleotide database, with matches retained only when the species are known
to occur in New Zealand.