Abstract

Studying parasitoids can provide insights into global diversity estimates, climate change impacts, and agroecosystem service provision. However, this potential remains largely untapped due to a lack of data on how parasitoids interact with other organisms. Ecological networks are a useful tool for studying and exploiting the impacts of parasitoids, but their construction is hindered by the magnitude of undescribed parasitoid species, a sparse knowledge of host ranges, and an under-representation of parasitoids within DNA-barcode databases (we estimate <5% have a barcode). Here, we advocate the use of DNA metabarcoding to construct the host-parasitoid component of multilayer networks. While the incorporation of parasitoids into network-based analyses has far ranging applications, we focus on its potential for assessing ecosystem service provision within agroecosystems.

Published in

Trends in Parasitology
2021, Volume: 37, number: 10, pages: 863-874
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU Authors

• Miller, Kirsten

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Sustainable Development Goals

Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts


UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2021.04.012

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/113806