TY - JOUR

T1 - Plants, pollinators and their interactions under global ecological change

T2 - The role of pollen DNA metabarcoding

AU - Bell, Karen L.

AU - Turo, Katherine J.

AU - Lowe, Abigail

AU - Nota, Kevin

AU - Keller, Alexander

AU - Encinas-Viso, Francisco

AU - Parducci, Laura

AU - Richardson, Rodney T.

AU - Leggett, Richard M.

AU - Brosi, Berry J.

AU - Burgess, Kevin S.

AU - Suyama, Yoshihisa

AU - de Vere, Natasha

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Molecular Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - DNA metabarcoding

KW - ecosystem change

KW - environmental DNA

KW - global change ecology

KW - metagenomics

KW - pollen

KW - pollination

U2 - 10.1111/mec.16689

DO - 10.1111/mec.16689

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 36086900

AN - SCOPUS:85138733500

VL - 32

SP - 6345

EP - 6362

JO - Molecular Ecology

JF - Molecular Ecology

SN - 0962-1083

IS - 23

ER -