Miller, Kirsten
- Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Research article2021Peer reviewedOpen access
Miller, Kirsten E.; Polaszek, Andrew; Evans, Darren M.
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.
Trends in Parasitology
2021, volume: 37, number: 10, pages: 863-874
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD
SDG13 Climate action
SDG15 Life on land
Ecology
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/113806