Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Jul;39(7):531-544.
doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2023.02.012. Epub 2023 Mar 10.

Future of DNA-based insect monitoring

Physilia Y S Chua  1 , Sarah J Bourlat  2 , Cameron Ferguson  3 , Petra Korlevic  3 , Leia Zhao  3 , Torbjørn Ekrem  4 , Rudolf Meier  5 , Mara K N Lawniczak  3
Affiliations
Review

Future of DNA-based insect monitoring

Physilia Y S Chua et al. Trends Genet. 2023 Jul.

Abstract

Insects are crucial for ecosystem health but climate change and pesticide use are driving massive insect decline. To mitigate this loss, we need new and effective monitoring techniques. Over the past decade there has been a shift to DNA-based techniques. We describe key emerging techniques for sample collection. We suggest that the selection of tools should be broadened, and that DNA-based insect monitoring data need to be integrated more rapidly into policymaking. We argue that there are four key areas for advancement, including the generation of more complete DNA barcode databases to interpret molecular data, standardisation of molecular methods, scaling up of monitoring efforts, and integrating molecular tools with other technologies that allow continuous, passive monitoring based on images and/or laser imaging, detection, and ranging (LIDAR).

Keywords: biodiversity monitoring; environmental DNA; high-throughput sequencing technologies; insects: LIDAR; metabarcoding.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interests The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources