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Research article2021Peer reviewedOpen access

A dearth of data: fitting parasitoids into ecological networks

Miller, Kirsten E.; Polaszek, Andrew; Evans, Darren M.

Abstract

Studying parasitoids can provide insights into global diversity estimates, climate change impacts, and agroecosystem service provision. However, this potential remains largely untapped due to a lack of data on how parasitoids interact with other organisms. Ecological networks are a useful tool for studying and exploiting the impacts of parasitoids, but their construction is hindered by the magnitude of undescribed parasitoid species, a sparse knowledge of host ranges, and an under-representation of parasitoids within DNA-barcode databases (we estimate <5% have a barcode). Here, we advocate the use of DNA metabarcoding to construct the host-parasitoid component of multilayer networks. While the incorporation of parasitoids into network-based analyses has far ranging applications, we focus on its potential for assessing ecosystem service provision within agroecosystems.

Published in

Trends in Parasitology
2021, volume: 37, number: 10, pages: 863-874
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU Authors

  • Miller, Kirsten

Global goals (SDG)

SDG13 Climate action
SDG15 Life on land

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2021.04.012

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/113806