Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, San Michele All'Adige, TN, Italy.
Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 13;11(1):1208. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-79738-5.
Current biodiversity loss is a major concern and thus biodiversity assessment of modern ecosystems is compelling and needs to be contextualized on a longer timescale. High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) is progressively becoming a major source of data on biodiversity time series. In this multi proxy study, we tested, for the first time, the potential of HTS to estimate plant biodiversity archived in the surface layers of a temperate alpine glacier, amplifying the trnL barcode for vascular plants from eDNA of firn samples. A 573 cm long core was drilled by the Adamello glacier and cut into sections; produced samples were analyzed for physical properties, stable isotope ratio, and plant biodiversity by eDNA metabarcoding and conventional light microscopy analysis. Results highlighted the presence of pollen and plant remains within the distinct layers of snow, firn and ice. While stable isotope ratio showed a scarcely informative pattern, DNA metabarcoding described distinct plant species composition among the different samples, with a broad taxonomic representation of the biodiversity of the catchment area and a high-ranking resolution. New knowledge on climate and plant biodiversity changes of large catchment areas can be obtained by this novel approach, relevant for future estimates of climate change effects.
目前生物多样性的丧失是一个主要关注点，因此对现代生态系统进行生物多样性评估迫在眉睫，需要在更长的时间尺度上进行。高通量测序（HTS）正逐渐成为生物多样性时间序列数据的主要来源。在这项多指标研究中，我们首次测试了 HTS 估算温带高山冰川表层植物生物多样性的潜力，从雪、冰碛和冰的不同层位的样冰晶中提取的 DNA 扩增了维管植物的 trnL 条码。亚得里亚冰川钻取了一个 573 厘米长的岩芯，并将其切割成不同的部分；对产生的样本进行了物理性质、稳定同位素比值和植物生物多样性的分析，包括利用 eDNA 宏条形码和常规的光学显微镜分析。研究结果表明，在不同的雪、冰碛和冰层中存在花粉和植物残体。虽然稳定同位素比值的结果没有提供太多信息，但 DNA 宏条形码描述了不同样本中不同的植物物种组成，涵盖了集水区生物多样性的广泛分类群，分辨率很高。通过这种新方法可以获得有关大集水区气候和植物生物多样性变化的新知识，这对于未来气候变化影响的估计非常重要。
