Meier Rudolf, Lawniczak Mara K N, Srivathsan Amrita
Institute for Biology, Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany; email:
Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery, Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany.
Annu Rev Entomol. 2025 Jan;70(1):185-204. doi: 10.1146/annurev-ento-040124-014001. Epub 2024 Dec 19.
Most insects encountered in the field are initially entomological dark matter in that they cannot be identified to species while alive. This explains the enduring quest for efficient ways to identify collected specimens. Morphological tools came first but are now routinely replaced or complemented with DNA barcodes. Initially too expensive for widespread use, these barcodes have since evolved into powerful tools for specimen identification and sorting, given that the evolution of sequencing approaches has dramatically reduced the cost of barcodes, thus enabling decentralized deployment across the planet. In this article, we review how DNA barcodes have become a key tool for accelerating biodiversity discovery and analyzing insect communities through both megabarcoding and metabarcoding in an era of insect decline. We predict that DNA barcodes will be particularly important for assembling image training sets for deep learning algorithms, global biodiversity genomics, and functional analysis of insect communities.
在野外遇到的大多数昆虫最初都是昆虫学上的暗物质，因为它们在活着的时候无法被鉴定到物种。这就解释了为什么人们一直在寻求高效的方法来鉴定采集到的标本。形态学工具是最先出现的，但现在通常被DNA条形码所取代或补充。这些条形码最初因成本过高而无法广泛使用，但随着测序技术的发展大幅降低了条形码的成本，使其能够在全球范围内分散部署，如今已成为标本鉴定和分类的强大工具。在本文中，我们回顾了在昆虫数量减少的时代，DNA条形码如何通过宏条形码和元条形码技术，成为加速生物多样性发现和分析昆虫群落的关键工具。我们预测，DNA条形码对于为深度学习算法组装图像训练集、全球生物多样性基因组学以及昆虫群落的功能分析将尤为重要。
