BE-Spring: Discovering Collembola biodiversity on grasslands with emerging genomic and metagenomic tools

BE-Spring：利用新兴的基因组和宏基因组工具发现草原上的弹​​跳虫生物多样性

• 批准号: 433017287
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Miklós Bálint, since 8/2022
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Insektenbiotechnologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/433017287?language=en
• 关键词: Spring; Discovering; Collembola; biodiversity; grasslands

Soil animal invertebrates are notoriously difficult to identify, and Collembola - springtails - are no exception. Due to those great difficulties in identifying Collembola very little is know of their basic ecology and natural history, especially at the species and community levels of organisation. The advent of DNA-based identification (barcoding and metabarcoding) promised to lift this difficulty, but it has also presented major limitations: 1) barcode databases for soil organisms are incomplete, especially in Germany, 2) studies often use different barcode regions and different primers and this decreases comparability, and 3) metabarcoding is not informative of biomass and abundance. As an answer to limited barcode availability we are creating the Springtail Genome Reference Database (SGRD) with a focus on grassland soil Collembola fauna. The SGRD will provide genome data that not only includes all standard barcodes, but also considerably increases available genomic information, including also lower-copy nuclear elements. As an answer to the problems with metabarcoding we are implementing a shotgun metagenomic tool that overcomes limitations with primer selection and biomass estimation. We will then use SGRD and metagenomics data together with the wealth of data collected in the Biodiversity Exploratories to assess the structure and functions of Collembola communities at all 150 grasslands sites . Specifically, we will evaluate 1) how land use intensity drives species abundance, richness and 2) functional trait distribution, and 3) how Collembola communities are related to other organism groups of the grassland ecosystem, including the abundance of particular fungi and plants. These activites will provide an invaluable resource for future research into the soil fauna communities of Western Europe and shed new insight into the fundamental ecology of a poorly understood group.

土壤动物无脊椎动物是出了名的难以识别，弹尾目-跳虫-也不例外。由于这些巨大的困难，在确定弹尾目很少知道他们的基本生态和自然历史，特别是在物种和社区水平的组织。基于DNA的鉴定（条形码和元条形码）的出现有望解除这一困难，但它也提出了主要的局限性：1）土壤生物的条形码数据库不完整，特别是在德国，2）研究经常使用不同的条形码区域和不同的引物，这降低了可比性，3）元条形码不能提供生物量和丰度的信息。作为有限的条形码可用性的答案，我们正在创建弹簧尾基因组参考数据库（SGRD），重点是草原土壤弹尾目动物群。SGRD将提供基因组数据，不仅包括所有标准条形码，而且还大大增加了可用的基因组信息，包括低拷贝核元件。作为元条形码问题的答案，我们正在实施一种鸟枪元基因组工具，克服了引物选择和生物量估计的局限性。然后，我们将使用SGRD和宏基因组学数据以及生物多样性探索站收集的大量数据，评估所有150个草原站点的弹尾虫群落的结构和功能。具体而言，我们将评估1）土地利用强度如何驱动物种丰度，丰富度和2）功能性状分布，以及3）弹尾目群落如何与草原生态系统的其他生物群相关，包括特定真菌和植物的丰度。这些活动将为西欧土壤动物群落的未来研究提供宝贵的资源，并对一个知之甚少的群体的基本生态学产生新的见解。