All articles tagged with #dna barcoding
Germany’s Malaise-trap program, spanning 75 sites over 2019–2020, sequenced roughly four billion DNA fragments to identify 10,803 insect species. Modeling suggests about 32,000 species are present, but most remain unnamed due to gaps in reference DNA barcodes, underscoring the urgent need to expand barcode libraries to better monitor insect declines.
A Brazilian megaproject is surveying insects across a 10,000‑hectare central Amazon site from ground to canopy, deploying multi‑level traps and a blitz of methods. After 14 months they’ve collected about 5.5 million specimens, with around 600,000 slated for DNA sequencing, and preliminary data suggest as many as 40,000 species may inhabit this patch—roughly 0.7% of the world’s estimated six million insect species—work being carried out by ~400 taxonomists who will describe and name new species, often drawing on Indigenous languages, rivers and regional history.
Austria’s Dr. Peter Huemer used DNA barcoding and genitalia dissection to reveal Carcina ingridmariae as a new cryptic species, distinct from Carcina quercana by 6.5% in a 658-base-pair COI gene; described in Alpine Entomology (Aug 2025) and named in honor of his wife Ingrid Maria, the moth spans the eastern Mediterranean (Cyprus, Croatia, Greece, Turkey) and was identified from about 100 specimens, illustrating how cryptic species can hide in plain sight.
Paul Hebert, a biologist, struggled to identify the millions of species of moths and butterflies until he had a lightbulb moment in a supermarket, leading to the development of DNA barcoding. This technique uses a segment of DNA to differentiate between species and has since been proven successful for identifying a vast majority of animal life. DNA barcoding has revolutionized species identification, providing a reliable, inexpensive, and accessible solution that has implications for conservation, combating wildlife crime, and monitoring biodiversity.
Researchers at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, in collaboration with Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium, have used a combination of visual-based gut content analysis and DNA barcoding to uncover the diet of the whitespotted eagle ray in U.S. coastal waters. The study reveals that the ray has a broader diet than previously described, with highly variable preferences across different regions of Florida. While they did not find commercially important bivalves in their diet, they did find high proportions of cockles and wedge shells, as well as predatory conchs. The findings have implications for shellfish enhancement activities and species management, suggesting that the rays can play a role in reducing predation threats to bivalve shellfish operations.
Researchers have developed a technique using DNA barcoding to identify the plant matter in human feces, allowing for the detection of what foods were consumed and the relative amounts. The genetic marker, called trnL-P6, can indicate dietary diversity, age, and household income. The technique has potential applications in clinical trials, nutrition studies, and understanding health and lifestyle patterns. The researchers are working on expanding the database to include more plant species and plan to apply the method to studies of disease and food biodiversity.