| 1. |
- Bell, Karen L., et al.
(författare)
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Plants, pollinators and their interactions under global ecological change : The role of pollen DNA metabarcoding
- 2023
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Ingår i: Molecular Ecology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0962-1083 .- 1365-294X. ; 32:23, s. 6345-6362
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Anthropogenic activities are triggering global changes in the environment, causing entire communities of plants, pollinators and their interactions to restructure, and ultimately leading to species declines. To understand the mechanisms behind community shifts and declines, as well as monitoring and managing impacts, a global effort must be made to characterize plant-pollinator communities in detail, across different habitat types, latitudes, elevations, and levels and types of disturbances. Generating data of this scale will only be feasible with rapid, high-throughput methods. Pollen DNA metabarcoding provides advantages in throughput, efficiency and taxonomic resolution over traditional methods, such as microscopic pollen identification and visual observation of plant-pollinator interactions. This makes it ideal for understanding complex ecological networks and their responses to change. Pollen DNA metabarcoding is currently being applied to assess plant-pollinator interactions, survey ecosystem change and model the spatiotemporal distribution of allergenic pollen. Where samples are available from past collections, pollen DNA metabarcoding has been used to compare contemporary and past ecosystems. New avenues of research are possible with the expansion of pollen DNA metabarcoding to intraspecific identification, analysis of DNA in ancient pollen samples, and increased use of museum and herbarium specimens. Ongoing developments in sequencing technologies can accelerate progress towards these goals. Global ecological change is happening rapidly, and we anticipate that high-throughput methods such as pollen DNA metabarcoding are critical for understanding the evolutionary and ecological processes that support biodiversity, and predicting and responding to the impacts of change.
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| 2. |
- Heintzman, Peter D., et al.
(författare)
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The sedimentary ancient DNA workflow
- 2023
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Ingår i: Tracking environmental change using lake sediments. - : Springer Nature. - 9783031437984 - 9783031438011 - 9783031437991 ; , s. 53-84
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) is continuing to revolutionise our understanding of past biological and geological processes by retrieving and analysing the ancient DNA preserved in lake, cave, open terrestrial, midden, permafrozen, and marine environments (Crump 2021). The study of sedaDNA began in the late 1990s (Coolen and Overmann 1998) with the first reports of extinct animal sedaDNA in 2003 (Hofreiter et al. 2003; Willerslev et al. 2003). Since then, it has been shown that sedaDNA can be recovered at high resolution from recent (101–102 year-old) (e.g., Capo et al. 2017) through to deep-time (105–106 year-old) sediments from a vast diversity of environments (Crump et al. 2021; Zavala et al. 2021; Armbrecht et al. 2022; Kjær et al. 2022). Unlike traditional palaeoenvironmental and palaeoecological proxies, sedaDNA is unique in that it is derived from any type of organism that was present in the local area and that may contain population-level information. This latter characteristic means that, unlike any other comparable proxy, sedaDNA can be used for evolutionary analyses (Gelabert et al. 2021; Lammers et al. 2021; Pedersen et al. 2021; Vernot et al. 2021).
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| 3. |
- Michel, Alice, et al.
(författare)
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Isolated Grauer's gorilla populations differ in diet and gut microbiome
- 2023
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Ingår i: Molecular Ecology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0962-1083 .- 1365-294X. ; 32:23, s. 6523-6542
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The animal gut microbiome has been implicated in a number of key biological processes, ranging from digestion to behaviour, and has also been suggested to facilitate local adaptation. Yet studies in wild animals rarely compare multiple populations that differ ecologically, which is the level at which local adaptation may occur. Further, few studies simultaneously characterize diet and gut microbiome from the same sample, despite their probable interdependence. Here, we investigate the interplay between diet and gut microbiome in three geographically isolated populations of the critically endangered Grauer's gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri), which we show to be genetically differentiated. We find population- and social group-specific dietary and gut microbial profiles and covariation between diet and gut microbiome, despite the presence of core microbial taxa. There was no detectable effect of age, and only marginal effects of sex and genetic relatedness on the microbiome. Diet differed considerably across populations, with the high-altitude population consuming a lower diversity of plants compared to low-altitude populations, consistent with plant availability constraining dietary choices. The observed pattern of covariation between diet and gut microbiome is probably a result of long-term social and environmental factors. Our study suggests that the gut microbiome is sufficiently plastic to support flexible food selection and hence contribute to local adaptation.
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| 4. |
- Williams, John W., et al.
(författare)
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Strengthening global-change science by integrating aeDNA with paleoecoinformatics
- 2023
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Ingår i: Trends in Ecology & Evolution. - : Elsevier. - 0169-5347 .- 1872-8383. ; 38:10, s. 946-960
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) data are close to enabling insights into past global-scale biodiversity dynamics at unprecedented taxonomic extent and resolution. However, achieving this potential requires solutions that bridge bioinformatics and paleoecoinformatics. Essential needs include support for dynamic taxonomic inferences, dynamic age inferences, and precise stratigraphic depth. Moreover, aeDNA data are complex and heterogeneous, generated by dispersed researcher networks, with methods advancing rapidly. Hence, expert community governance and curation are essential to building high-value data resources. Immediate recommendations include uploading metabarcoding-based taxonomic inventories into paleoecoinformatic resources, building linkages among open bioinformatic and paleoecoinformatic data resources, harmonizing aeDNA processing workflows, and expanding community data governance. These advances will enable transformative insights into global-scale biodiversity dynamics during large environmental and anthropogenic changes.
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