Abstract
High‐throughput sequencing (HTS) is increasingly being used for the characterization and monitoring of biodiversity. If applied in a structured way, across broad geographical scales, it offers the potential for a much deeper understanding of global biodiversity through the integration of massive quantities of molecular inventory data generated independently at local, regional and global scales. The universality, reliability and efficiency of HTS data can potentially facilitate the seamless linking of data among species assemblages from different sites, at different hierarchical levels of diversity, for any taxonomic group and regardless of prior taxonomic knowledge. However, collective international efforts are required to optimally exploit the potential of site‐based HTS data for global integration and synthesis, efforts that at present are limited to the microbial domain. To contribute to the development of an analogous strategy for the nonmicrobial terrestrial domain, an international symposium entitled “Next Generation Biodiversity Monitoring” was held in November 2019 in Nicosia (Cyprus). The symposium brought together evolutionary geneticists, ecologists and biodiversity scientists involved in diverse regional and global initiatives using HTS as a core tool for biodiversity assessment. In this review, we summarize the consensus that emerged from the 3‐day symposium. We converged on the opinion that an effective terrestrial Genomic Observatories network for global biodiversity integration and synthesis should be spatially led and strategically united under the umbrella of the metabarcoding approach. Subsequently, we outline an HTS‐based strategy to collectively build an integrative framework for site‐based biodiversity data generation.
Highlights
High-throughput sequencing (HTS) is increasingly being used for the characterization and monitoring of ecosystems and holds the prospect for a much deeper understanding of global diversity on Earth (e.g. Bohan et al, 2017; Bush et al, 2017; Taberlet et al, 2018)
Collective international efforts are required to optimally exploit the potential of site-based HTS data for global integration and synthesis, efforts that at present are limited to the microbial domain
Within the spatially led terrestrial Genomic Observatories (GOs) network that we propose, where metabarcoding is at the core of data generation, both the temporal and the genomic axes can be more deeply sampled (Figure 1), consistent with the idea of “model ecosystems” (Davies et al, 2012, 2014)
Summary
High-throughput sequencing (HTS) is increasingly being used for the characterization and monitoring of ecosystems and holds the prospect for a much deeper understanding of global diversity on Earth (e.g. Bohan et al, 2017; Bush et al, 2017; Taberlet et al, 2018). As well as potentially providing a deeper understanding of dynamics at a local scale, these additional layers of information may serve as: (i) calibrations within the global network (e.g., for the assessment of inventory completeness, validation of diversity estimations using different sources of genomic information); (ii) sites where the interplay between different dimensions of diversity (e.g., genetic, taxonomic, phylogenetic, functional, interaction) can be assessed in depth; or (iii) sites where the periodic implementation of a particular module or modules could be undertaken to generate long- term HTS biodiversity data series. Discussion within the symposium converged on the opinion that an effective, spatially led terrestrial GO network should place importance on maximizing the global distribution of sampling sites and that these should be strategically united under the umbrella of the single-locus metabarcoding approach (Figure 1a) Within this framework, we agreed that optimal comparison and integration among independently generated community data sets would be best served by the establishment of harmonized (cf standardized, see Walters & Scholes, 2017) molecular approaches for site-based biodiversity surveys. Terrestrial arthropods collected by interception, pitfall and Malaise traps, soil arthropods extracted by FBF protocol eDNA (bacteria, fungi, protists, plants, animals) from soil samples eDNA filtered water samples eDNA (fungi) filtered air samples
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
