RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Carrion fly-derived DNA metabarcoding is an effective tool for mammal surveys: evidence from a known tropical mammal community JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 133405 DO 10.1101/133405 A1 Torrey W. Rodgers A1 Charles C. Y. Xu A1 Jacalyn Giacalone A1 Karen M. Kapheim A1 Kristin Saltonstall A1 Marta Vargas A1 Douglas W. Yu A1 Panu Somervuo A1 W. Owen McMillan A1 Patrick A. Jansen YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/02/133405.abstract AB Metabarcoding of vertebrate DNA derived from carrion flies has been proposed as a promising tool for biodiversity monitoring. To evaluate its efficacy, we conducted metabarcoding surveys of carrion flies on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama, which has a well-known mammal community, and compared our results against diurnal transect counts and camera-trapping. We collected 1084 flies in 29 sampling days, which were pooled into 102 DNA extractions. We then conducted metabarcoding with mammal-specific (16S) and vertebrate-specific (12S) primers targeting mtDNA, and sequenced these amplicons on Illumina MiSeq. For taxonomic assignment, we compared BLAST with the new program PROTAX, and we found PROTAX significantly improved species identifications. We detected 20 mammal, four bird, and one lizard species from carrion fly metabarcoding, all but one of which were previously known from BCI. Fly metabarcoding detected more mammal species than concurrent transect counts (29 sampling days, 13 species) and concurrent camera-trapping (84 sampling days, 17 species), and detected 67% of the number of mammal species documented by 8 years of transect counts and camera-trapping combined, although fly metabarcoding missed several abundant species. This study demonstrates that carrion fly metabarcoding is a powerful tool for mammal biodiversity surveys, and has the potential to detect a broader range of species than more commonly used methods.