TY - BOOK
T1 - When Leeches reveal Biodiversity
T2 - Prospects and Pitfalls of iDNA
AU - Schnell, Ida Bærholm
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - One of the fundamental challenges for conservation biologists is to accurately estimate abundances and distributions of vertebrate species to appropriately inform conservation efforts, and to assess on-going management interventions. Thus, any methodological ‘breakthroughs’ in species monitoring may be extremely valuable, especially if they make data collection more easy or efficient, lower the impact on the target species and/orreduce financial and physical costs. In recent years, the discipline of iDNA has emerged where vertebrate genetic material ingested by invertebrates is used to provide information about vertebrate biodiversity. This thesis covers the development of a monitoring method based on iDNA extracted from terrestrial haematophagous leeches, a continuation of the work presented in Schnell et al., 2012. The chapters investigate and/or discuss different subjects regarding the method including the potentials and the challenges. For instance, one chapter presents how iDNA from leeches can be analysed using DNA metabarcoding coupled to second generation sequencing techonologies to increase the throughput and reduce costs accoatied with the analyses. How to incorporate iDNA data from leeches into the state of-the-art analytical tools for estimates of species abundances, population dynamics and distributions is also included in the thesis, and a third chapter address the risk of sequence-to-sample misidentification primarily caused by “tag jumps” in metabarcoding studies.
AB - One of the fundamental challenges for conservation biologists is to accurately estimate abundances and distributions of vertebrate species to appropriately inform conservation efforts, and to assess on-going management interventions. Thus, any methodological ‘breakthroughs’ in species monitoring may be extremely valuable, especially if they make data collection more easy or efficient, lower the impact on the target species and/orreduce financial and physical costs. In recent years, the discipline of iDNA has emerged where vertebrate genetic material ingested by invertebrates is used to provide information about vertebrate biodiversity. This thesis covers the development of a monitoring method based on iDNA extracted from terrestrial haematophagous leeches, a continuation of the work presented in Schnell et al., 2012. The chapters investigate and/or discuss different subjects regarding the method including the potentials and the challenges. For instance, one chapter presents how iDNA from leeches can be analysed using DNA metabarcoding coupled to second generation sequencing techonologies to increase the throughput and reduce costs accoatied with the analyses. How to incorporate iDNA data from leeches into the state of-the-art analytical tools for estimates of species abundances, population dynamics and distributions is also included in the thesis, and a third chapter address the risk of sequence-to-sample misidentification primarily caused by “tag jumps” in metabarcoding studies.
UR - https://rex.kb.dk/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=KGL01010158257&context=L&vid=NUI&search_scope=KGL&tab=default_tab&lang=da_DK
M3 - Ph.D. thesis
BT - When Leeches reveal Biodiversity
PB - Natural History Museum of Denmark, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen
ER -