Pollen forage of honey bees Targeted loci environmental

In light of recent pollinator declines and potential loss of pollination services, the has been increased basic and applied research on pollinator systems. Sequencing of phylogenetically informative “barcode” genetic loci has emerged over the past two decades as a robust tool for taxonomic classification that often achieves higher resolution than morphological or other classification methods. More recently, high-throughput sequencing has allowed “meta-barcoding” analysis of diverse mixtures, and this approach has begun to be applied to bee-collected. Here we develop a sequencing approach that differs from other approaches in the sequence that was analyzed, the use of a higher-capacity platform with more flexible multiplexing, and/or the development of a workflow for non-overlapping read pairs.