Blast output from: Lost in dead wood? Environmental DNA sequencing from dead wood shows little signs of saproxylic beetles

eDNA metabarcoding has become a standard method for assessing wood-inhabiting fungi and bacteria, yet determination of dead-wood-inhabiting beetles still relies on time-consuming collection of beetle specimens. We thus tested whether beetle species can be identified by eDNA sequencing of wood in a mesocosm experiment that manipulated species assemblages. Dead wood samples were taken at exit holes of beetles and DNA was extracted and analyzed using two comparative methods: (i) metabarcoding with standard arthropod primers (421 bp) and (ii) using short species-specific primers (120-264 bp) with Sanger sequencing. Results showed that beetle DNA was amplified by each of the two approaches, however, with (i) we detected only one non-target saproxylic beetle species. In addition, we identified 80 different OTUs with four non-targeted species of arthropods. For (ii) we detected the targeted species in two fresh beetle exit holes out of 20 samples. We suggest that, in contrast to fungi and bact...