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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The world is currently facing an unprecedented loss of biodiversity. As highlighted in the latest IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services, about 1 million animal and plant species are currently threatened with extinction. Biodiversity, however, is not something static, but rather dynamic and sensitive to changing environmental conditions. For documenting, maintaining, and monitoring changes in biodiversity and its numerous functions, it is necessary to be able to identify which entities contribute to biodiversity. For many taxa, a reliable species identification, the prerequisite for studying biodiversity, is, if at all, only able to be made possible by taxonomic experts, whose numbers have been drastically declining over the last few decades.

DNA barcoding is a method for identifying specimens (ideally to a species level) via employing an expert-based reference system (open access database) that drastically increases the number of people able to identify organisms down to species level and reduces the rate of misidentifications among morphologically similar taxa. Specifically, DNA barcoding is a standardized approach for identifying organisms based on specific sections of their DNA. Depending on the taxonomic group, different genes have been established as standard DNA barcoding markers, even though for certain applications or taxa other genes might be used. Consequently, DNA barcodes should allow for (in most cases) unambiguous specimen identification (also of morphologically unidentifiable life stages/sexes or parts of organisms) once a reliable DNA barcode reference database is available, and thus are an important tool in basic and applied biodiversity, as well as evolutionary biology research.

This Special Issue shall provide a platform with which to highlight new research and significant advances in DNA barcoding (incl. metabarcoding, eDNA, etc.) and its relevance for biodiversity and evolutionary biology research. In addition to empirical studies, submissions that focus on new methods, technologies, and analyses that aid in the generation and application of DNA barcoding data are also highly welcome.

Dr. Stephan Koblmüller
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diversity is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (1 paper)

Research

14 pages, 985 KiB

Open AccessArticle

DNA Barcoding for Species Identification of Moss-Dwelling Invertebrates: Performance of Nanopore Sequencing and Coverage in Reference Database

by Stephan Koblmüller, Philipp Resl, Nadine Klar, Hanna Bauer, Lukas Zangl and Christoph Hahn

Diversity 2024, 16(4), 196; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/d16040196 - 25 Mar 2024

Viewed by 562

Abstract

In view of the current biodiversity crisis and our need to preserve and improve ecosystem functioning, efficient means for characterizing and monitoring biodiversity are required. DNA barcoding, especially when coupled with new sequencing technologies, is a promising method that can, in principle, also be employed by taxonomic lay people. In this study we compare the performance of DNA barcoding by means of a third-generation sequencing technology, nanopore sequencing with classical Sanger sequencing, based on a sample of invertebrates collected from moss pads in a bog in Austria. We find that our nanopore sequencing pipeline generates DNA barcodes that are at least as good as barcodes generated with Sanger sequencing, with the MinION producing better results than the Flongle flowcell. We further find that while many arthropod taxa are well covered in the international reference DNA barcode database BOLD, this clearly is not the case for important taxa like mites and springtails, which hampers large-scale biodiversity assessments. Based on examples from our study we further highlight which factors might be responsible for ambiguous species identification based on BOLD and how this can, at least partly, be solved. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue DNA Barcodes for Evolution and Biodiversity—2nd Edition)

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