Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Pollen metabarcoding as a tool for tracking long-distance insect migrations

Tomasz Suchan, Gerard Talavera, Llorenç Sáez, Michał Ronikier, Roger Vila
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/312363
Tomasz Suchan
1W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, Lubicz 46, 31-512 Kraków, Poland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: t.suchan@botany.pl
Gerard Talavera
2Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta 37, ESP-08003 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
3Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Llorenç Sáez
4Systematics and Evolution of vascular plants, Associated unit to CSIC. Unitat de Botànica, Facultat de Biociències, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, E-08193, Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Michał Ronikier
1W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, Lubicz 46, 31-512 Kraków, Poland
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Roger Vila
2Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Passeig Marítim de la Barceloneta 37, ESP-08003 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Insects account for the main fraction of Earth’s biodiversity and are key players for ecosystems, notably as pollinators. While insect migration is suspected to represent a natural phenomenon of major importance, remarkably little is known about it, except for a few flagship species. The reason for this situation is mainly due to technical limitations in the study of insect movement. Here we propose using metabarcoding of pollen carried by insects as a method for tracking their migrations. We developed a flexible and simple protocol allowing high multiplexing and not requiring DNA extraction, one of the most time consuming part of metabarcoding protocols, and apply this method to the study of the longdistance migration of the butterfly Vanessa cardui, an emerging model for insect migration. We collected 47 butterfly samples along the Mediterranean coast of Spain in spring and performed metabarcoding of pollen collected from their bodies to test for potential arrivals from the African continent. In total, we detected 157 plant species from 23 orders, most of which (82.8%) were insect-pollinated. African or African-Arabian endemic taxa contributed 21.0% of our dataset, strongly supporting the hypothesis that migratory butterflies colonize southern Europe from Africa in spring. Moreover, our data suggest that a northwards trans-Saharan migration in spring is plausible for early arrivals (February) into Europe, as shown by the presence of Saharan floristic elements. Our results demonstrate the possibility of regular insect-mediated transcontinental pollination, with potential implications for ecosystem functioning, agriculture and plant phylogeography. Despite current limitations, mostly regarding the availability of plant reference sequences and distribution data, the method proved to be useful and demonstrates great potential as plant genetic libraries and distribution datasets improve.

Footnotes

  • ↵† TS and GT should be considered joint first authors

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted May 02, 2018.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Pollen metabarcoding as a tool for tracking long-distance insect migrations
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Pollen metabarcoding as a tool for tracking long-distance insect migrations
Tomasz Suchan, Gerard Talavera, Llorenç Sáez, Michał Ronikier, Roger Vila
bioRxiv 312363; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/312363
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Pollen metabarcoding as a tool for tracking long-distance insect migrations
Tomasz Suchan, Gerard Talavera, Llorenç Sáez, Michał Ronikier, Roger Vila
bioRxiv 312363; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/312363

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Ecology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (2646)
  • Biochemistry (5268)
  • Bioengineering (3678)
  • Bioinformatics (15796)
  • Biophysics (7257)
  • Cancer Biology (5629)
  • Cell Biology (8099)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (4768)
  • Ecology (7517)
  • Epidemiology (2059)
  • Evolutionary Biology (10578)
  • Genetics (7733)
  • Genomics (10137)
  • Immunology (5194)
  • Microbiology (13914)
  • Molecular Biology (5387)
  • Neuroscience (30782)
  • Paleontology (215)
  • Pathology (879)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (1525)
  • Physiology (2254)
  • Plant Biology (5024)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1041)
  • Synthetic Biology (1388)
  • Systems Biology (4146)
  • Zoology (812)