State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, 650223, China.
Ecol Lett. 2013 Oct;16(10):1245-57. doi: 10.1111/ele.12162. Epub 2013 Aug 4.
To manage and conserve biodiversity, one must know what is being lost, where, and why, as well as which remedies are likely to be most effective. Metabarcoding technology can characterise the species compositions of mass samples of eukaryotes or of environmental DNA. Here, we validate metabarcoding by testing it against three high-quality standard data sets that were collected in Malaysia (tropical), China (subtropical) and the United Kingdom (temperate) and that comprised 55,813 arthropod and bird specimens identified to species level with the expenditure of 2,505 person-hours of taxonomic expertise. The metabarcode and standard data sets exhibit statistically correlated alpha- and beta-diversities, and the two data sets produce similar policy conclusions for two conservation applications: restoration ecology and systematic conservation planning. Compared with standard biodiversity data sets, metabarcoded samples are taxonomically more comprehensive, many times quicker to produce, less reliant on taxonomic expertise and auditable by third parties, which is essential for dispute resolution.
为了管理和保护生物多样性，人们必须了解正在失去什么、在哪里失去以及为什么会失去，以及哪些补救措施可能最有效。代谢条形码技术可以描述大量真核生物或环境 DNA 样本的物种组成。在这里，我们通过将其与在马来西亚（热带）、中国（亚热带）和英国（温带）收集的三个高质量标准数据集进行测试来验证代谢条形码技术，这三个数据集包含 55813 个节肢动物和鸟类标本，这些标本的鉴定耗费了 2505 个人小时的分类学专业知识。代谢条形码和标准数据集显示出具有统计学相关性的 alpha 和 beta 多样性，并且这两个数据集对于两个保护应用程序（恢复生态学和系统保护规划）产生了相似的政策结论。与标准生物多样性数据集相比，代谢条形码样本在分类学上更加全面，生成速度快很多倍，对分类学专业知识的依赖性更小，并且可以由第三方审核，这对于解决争议至关重要。
