Mining biodiversity databases establishes a global baseline of cosmopolitan Insecta mOTUs: a case study on Platygastroidea (Hymenoptera) with consequences for biological control programs

By

Moore, Matthew R.
Talamas, Elijah
Bremer, Jonathan
McGathey, Natalie
Fulton, James
Lahey, Zachary
Awad, Jessica
Roberts, Cheryl
Combee, Lynn

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2023

Original Publication

NeoBiota : advancing research on alien species and biological invasions

Volume

88

Pages

169--210

Subjects

adventive species , Biodiversity databases , Biological control , COI barcoding

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sophia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.88.106326

 

Abstract

In the past decade, several species of platygastroid wasps were found to be adventive in North America and Europe while under evaluation in quarantine as biological control agents of invasive pests. The scope and relative risk of this phenomenon is not fully known, but it is clearly a trend with implications for classical biological control. As a means of assessing the issue and to provide a global baseline, we implemented a data-mining approach with DNA sequences in the Barcode of Life Database, yielding 201 platygastroid BINs with intercontinental and island distributions. At least fifty-five BINs displayed exact COI barcode matches across continents, with many more BINs scored as inconclusive due to sequence length variation. These intercontinental and island BINs include biocontrol agents known to be adventive, as well as many species identified only to genus with uncertain geographic origins. We provide 2,500 identifications for platygastroid BOLD BINs, 88% to genus, to encourage additional research on this distributional phenomenon. The intercontinental BOLD BINs were compared to literature records and GBIF occurrences of cosmopolitan species to identify gaps and discordance across data sources. Smaller COI barcode datasets from localities in Florida and Germany, including topotypical specimens, revealed more intercontinental matches. We analyzed COI sequences in BOLD for the entirety of Insecta and Araneae to assess this phenomenon more broadly and because these taxa contain many hosts for platygastroid wasps. This method revealed that the intercontinental distribution phenomenon is widespread with implications for assessing biological diversity, taxonomic methodology and regulatory frameworks.