Paul D N Hebert

University of Guelph | UOGuelph · Centre for Biodiversity Genomics

Gambia is the smallest country in Africa and most of its surface is covered by water. It is also a low-income country with most of the people depending on the river for obtaining critical resources. The river is a biodiversity hotspot that is currently endangered due to seawater intrusion caused by a 40-years long drought and likely to be worsened...

Global biodiversity gradients are generally expected to reflect greater species replacement closer to the equator. However, empirical validation of global biodiversity gradients largely relies on vertebrates, plants, and other less diverse taxa. Here we assess the temporal and spatial dynamics of global arthropod biodiversity dynamics using a beta-...

Large-scale digitization of natural history collections requires the automation of image acquisition and processing. Reflecting this fact, various approaches, some highly sophisticated, have been developed to support the imaging of museum specimens. However, most of these systems are complex and expensive, restricting their deployment. Here we desc...

Ocean Census is a new Large-Scale Strategic Science Mission aimed at accelerating the discovery and description of marine species. This mission addresses the knowledge gap of the diversity and distribution of marine life whereby of an estimated 1 million to 2 million species of marine life between 75% to 90% remain undescribed to date. Without impr...

The Atlantic Forest harbors 7% of global biodiversity and possesses high levels of endemism, but many of its component taxa remain unstudied. Due to the importance of tropical forests and the urgency to protect them, there is a compelling need to address this knowledge gap. To provide more information on its arthropod fauna, a Malaise trap was depl...

DNA metabarcoding has the potential to greatly advance understanding of soil biodiversity, but this approach has seen limited application for the most abundant and species-rich group of soil fauna-the arthropods. This study begins to address this gap by comparing information on species composition recovered from metabarcoding two types of bulk samp...

Eriophyoid mites (Acari: Eriophyoidea) are among the smallest of terrestrial arthropods and the most species‐rich group of herbivorous mites with a high host specificity. However, knowledge of their species diversity has been impeded by the difficulty of their morphological differentiation. This study assembles a DNA barcode reference library that...

Although biomass values are critical for diverse ecological and evolutionary analyses, they are unavailable for most insect species. Museum specimens have the potential to address this gap, but the variation introduced by sampling and preservation methods is uncertain. This study quantifies species-level variation in the body mass of Canadian Coleo...

Determining the size of the German insect fauna requires better knowledge of several megadiverse families of Diptera and Hymenoptera that are taxonomically challenging. This study takes the first step in assessing these “dark taxa” families and provides species estimates for four challenging groups of Diptera (Cecidomyiidae, Chironomidae, Phoridae,...

?Abstract Twenty-nine species are treated, most of which have host caterpillar and food plant records, and all but one are new to science. The first host record for the agathidine genus Amputoearinus is given. Gnathopleurajosequesadai Sharkey, sp. nov. is reported as a hyperparasitoid of fly larvae, the first such record for the genus. The followin...

To associate specimens identified by molecular characters to other biological knowledge, we need reference sequences annotated by Linnaean taxonomy. In this paper, we 1) report the creation of a comprehensive reference library of DNA barcodes for the arthropods of an entire country (Finland), 2) publish this library, and 3) deliver a new identifica...

Although mites (Acari) are abundant in many terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, their diversity is poorly understood. Since most mite species can be distinguished by variation in the DNA barcode region of cytochrome c oxidase I, the Barcode Index Number (BIN) system provides a reliable species proxy that facilitates large-scale surveys. Such ana...

A molecular phylogeny of the subfamily Rogadinae is presented for 469 species in 52 genera representing all tribes and subtribes. The data comprise cytochrome c oxidase I sequences (DNA barcodes), together with a broad representation of 28S rDNA D2-D3 expansion region, EF1-α gene and 16S rDNA fragments. To test monophyly, most genera were represent...

Background Traditional biomonitoring approaches have delivered a basic understanding of biodiversity, but they cannot support the large scale assessments required to manage and protect entire ecosystems. This study employed DNA metabarcoding to assess spatial and temporal variation in species richness and diversity in arthropod communities from 52...

Global biodiversity is in crises. Recognition of the scale and pace of biodiversity loss is leading to rapid technological development in biodiversity science to identify species, their interactions, and ecosystem dynamics. National and international policy developments to stimulate mitigation and remediation actions are escalating to meet the biod...

Prior studies of butterfly diversification in the Neotropics have focused on Amazonia and the tropical Andes, while southern regions of the continent have received little attention. To address the gap in knowledge about the Lepidoptera of temperate South America, we analyzed over 3,000 specimens representing nearly 500 species from Argentina for a...

To associate specimens identified by molecular characters to other biological knowledge, we need reference sequences annotated by Linnaean taxonomy. In this paper, we 1) report the creation of a comprehensive reference library of DNA barcodes for the arthropods of an entire country (Finland), 2) publish this library, and 3) deliver a new identifica...

Although the butterflies of North America have received considerable taxonomic attention, overlooked species and instances of hybridization continue to be revealed. The present study assembles a DNA barcode reference library for this fauna to identify groups whose patterns of sequence variation suggest the need for further taxonomic study. Based on...

Reflecting their species richness and ecological diversification, insects play a central role in terrestrial ecosystems but difficulties in species-level assignments have restricted large-scale analysis of their community structure. Employing South Africa's largest national park as a model system, we demonstrate that DNA barcoding can break this ba...

The effective use of metabarcoding in biodiversity science has brought important analytical challenges due to the need to generate accurate taxonomic assignments. The assignment of sequences to genus or species level is critical for biodiversity surveys and biomonitoring, but it is particularly challenging as researchers must select the approach th...

There are ~240 species of Culicidae in Mexico, of which some are vectors of arthropod-borne viruses such as Zika virus, dengue virus, chikungunya virus, and West Nile virus. Thus, the identification of mosquito feeding preferences is paramount to understanding of vector–host–pathogen interactions that, in turn, can aid the control of disease outbre...

The study of global biodiversity will greatly benefit from access to comprehensive DNA barcode libraries at continental scale, but such datasets are still very rare. Here, we assemble the first high-resolution reference library for European butterflies that provides 97% taxon coverage (459 species) and 22,306 COI sequences. We estimate that we capt...

DNA barcoding and metabarcoding are now widely used to advance species discovery and biodiversity assessments. High‐throughput sequencing (HTS) has expanded the volume and scope of these analyses, but elevated error rates introduce noise into sequence records that can inflate estimates of biodiversity. Denoising —the separation of biological signal...

Based on light trap collections made at three sites in 2015 and 2017, the minimum species richness of the Pyraloidea of Nicaragua is evaluated by morphological identifications. Altogether, 477 putative species belonging to 16 subfamilies were recorded. A list of these species is provided, along with illustrations of all Crambinae species. Two third...

Three new genera are described: Michener (Proteropinae), Bioalfa (Rogadinae), and Hermosomastax (Rogadinae). Keys are given for the New World genera of the following braconid subfamilies: Agathidinae, Braconinae, Cheloninae, Homolobinae, Hormiinae, Ichneutinae, Macrocentrinae, Orgilinae, Proteropinae, Rhysipolinae, and Rogadinae. In these subfamili...

Natural history collections are a valuable resource for molecular taxonomic studies and for examining patterns of evolutionary diversification, particularly in the case of rare or extinct species. However, the recovery of sequence information is often complicated by DNA degradation. This article describes use of the Sequel platform (Pacific Bioscie...

In this paper, a new species of Kuzinellus Wainstein, K. gabonensis sp. nov., is described based on specimens collected in Gabon. This new species is morphologically similar to K. querellus (Ueckermann & Loots), but it can be distinguished mainly by the knobbed tip of the dorsal setae Z4, spermatheca shape and by its possession of more than 15% div...

DNA barcoding and metabarcoding are now widely used to advance species discovery and biodiversity assessments. High-throughput sequencing (HTS) has expanded the volume and scope of these analyses, but elevated error rates introduce noise into sequence records that can inflate estimates of biodiversity. Denoising--the separation of biological signal...

Aculeata hymenopterans play a crucial role in ecology and economics. Diversity analysis of 901 Aculeata wasps at Chittagong University Campus a site in Bangladesh was performed by sequencing DNA barcodes (658 bp sequence from the 5′-end of cytochromeoxidase I). Specimens were collected by a Malaise trap from April 2014 to March 2015. The results re...

Lepidoptera forms an essential part and one of the dominant groups of insects of the natural terrestrial ecosystem, and they are widely distributed ranging from desert to rainforest, from lowland grasslands to mountain plateaus. The main aim of the present study is to identify the lepidopterans’ diversity, at a site in Bangladesh through DNA barcod...

Coleopterans (Insecta: Coleoptera) are the most diverse, species-rich and major ecosystem service providers group of insects. In the present study, the main objective behind is to confirm identification of coleopterans by using DNA barcoding technique (658 bp sequence from the 5′-end of cytochromeoxidase I) Specimens were collected by a Malaise tra...

Background Aedes aegypti mosquito-borne viruses including Zika (ZIKV), dengue (DENV), yellow fever (YFV), and chikungunya (CHIKV) have emerged and re-emerged globally, resulting in an elevated burden of human disease. Aedes aegypti is found worldwide in tropical, sub-tropical, and temperate areas. The characterization of mosquito blood meals is ess...

Mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) are regarded as annoying biting pests and vectors of disease-causing agents to humans and other vertebrates worldwide. Factors that affect their distribution and host choice are not well understood. Here, we assessed the species abundance, community composition, and feeding patterns of mosquitoes in an urban-to-wild...

Lipolexis is a small genus in the subfamily Aphidiinae represented by one species in Europe (Lipolexis gracilis Förster) and by four in Asia (Lipolexis wuyiensis Chen, L. oregmae Gahan, L. myzakkaiae Pramanik and Raychaudhuri and L. pseudoscutellaris Pramanik and Raychaudhuri). Although L. oregmae is employed in biological control programs against...

Accurate species delimitation is essential for the study of biodiversity, but morphological approaches often provide a limited ability to connect different life stages, sexes or other phenotypic variants in eriophyoid mites because many species possess two phenotypically distinct forms: protogynes and deutogynes. In this study, we analysed the morp...

The effective use of metabarcoding in biodiversity science has brought important analytical challenges due to the need to generate accurate taxonomic assignments. The assignment of sequences to a generic or species level is critical for biodiversity surveys and biomonitoring, but it is particularly challenging. Researchers must select the approach...

A new genus of braconine parasitoid wasp, Acgorium Sharkey & Quicke gen. nov., based on a new species from Costa Rica, Acgorium felipechavarriai Sharkey sp. nov., is described and illustrated, based on specimens reared from wild-caught hesperiid caterpillars of Dyscophellus phraxanor (Hewitson). Acgorium felipechavarriai is the first known braconin...

We report one year (2013-2014) of biomonitoring an insect community in a tropical old-growth rainforest, during construction of an industrial-level geothermal electricity project. This is the first-year reaction by the species-rich insect biodiversity; six subsequent years are being analyzed now. The site is on the margin of a UNESCO Natural World...

DNA metabarcoding was utilized for a large‐scale, multi‐year assessment of biodiversity in Malaise trap collections from the Bavarian Forest National Park (Germany, Bavaria). Principal Component Analysis of read count‐based biodiversities revealed clustering in concordance with whether collection sites were located inside or outside of the National...

Intraspecific genetic differentiation reflects processes that underpin biodiversity in deep-sea habitats. We examined the spatial genetic structure of epibenthic amphipod taxa from upper bathyal depths (200–1200 m) along New Zealand's continental margins. Genetic variability in amphipods was assessed using cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) to characteri...

The severe acute respiratory syndrome virus, SARS-CoV-2 (hereafter COVID-19), rapidly achieved global pandemic status, provoking large-scale screening programs in many nations. Their activation makes it imperative to identify methods that can deliver a diagnostic result at low cost. This paper describes an approach which employs sequence variation...

A new tribe of braconid wasps provisionally included in the Rhyssalinae, Laibaleini trib. nov., type genus Laibalea gen. nov. (type species Laibalea enigmatica sp. nov.), from Kenya and the Central African Republic, is described. A molecular dataset, with emphasis on basally derived taxa based on four gene fragments (28S D2–D3 expansion region, COI...

Applications of biological knowledge, such as forensics, often require the determination of biological materials to a species level. As such, DNA-based approaches to identification, particularly DNA barcoding, are attracting increased interest. The capacity of DNA barcodes to assign newly encountered specimens to a species relies upon access to inf...

For the first time, a nearly complete barcode library for European Gelechiidae is provided. DNA barcode sequences (COI gene-cytochrome c oxidase 1) from 751 out of 865 nominal species, belonging to 105 genera, were successfully recovered. A total of 741 species represented by specimens with sequences ≥ 500bp and an additional ten species represente...

It has been hypothesised that the 2‐year oscillations in abundance of Xestia moths are mediated by interactions with 1‐year Ophion parasitoid wasps. We tested this hypothesis by modelling a 35‐year time series of Xestia and Ophion from Northern Finland. Additionally, we used DNA barcoding to ascertain the species diversity of Ophion and targeted am...

Members of the Monoctonina subtribe have long been neglected in applied studies of the subfamily Aphidiinae, due to their low economic importance, as they do not parasitize pests of cultivated plants. Consequently, data about this group are scarce, including its taxonomy and phylogeny. In the present study, we explore inter-and intraspecific geneti...

The Trachypetinae (type genus Trachypetus Guérin de Méneville) comprise seven species of large‐bodied wasps in three genera (Cercobarcon Tobias, Megalohelcon Turner and Trachypetus) endemic to continental Australia. Historically they have been variously treated, as members of the Helconinae in the case of Megalohelcon, or as separate subfamilies (C...

The kingdom Fungi is a megadiverse group represented in all ecosystem types. The global diversity and distribution of fungal taxa are poorly known, in part due to the limitations related to traditional fruit-body survey methods. These previous hurdles are now being overcome by rapidly developing DNA-based surveys. Past fungal DNA surveys have predo...

DNA barcoding is highly effective for identifying specimens once a reference sequence library is available for the species assemblage targeted for analysis. Despite the great need for an improved capacity to identify the insect pests of crops, the use of DNA barcoding is constrained by the lack of a well-parameterized reference library. The current...

The reliable taxonomic identification of organisms through DNA sequence data requires a well parameterized library of curated reference sequences. However, it is estimated that just 15% of described animal species are represented in public sequence repositories. To begin to address this deficiency, we provide DNA barcodes for 1,500,003 animal speci...

This study demonstrates the power of DNA barcoding to detect overlooked and newly arrived taxa. Sixty-three species of Coleoptera representing 25 families are studied based on DNA barcode data and morphological analysis of the barcoded specimens. Three of the species involve synonymies or previous taxonomic confusion in North America, while the fir...

The descriptive taxonomic study reported here is focused on Glyptapanteles , a species-rich genus of hymenopteran parasitoid wasps. The species were found within the framework of two independent long-term Neotropical caterpillar rearing projects: northwestern Costa Rica (Área de Conservación Guanacaste, ACG) and eastern Andes, Ecuador (centered on...

Given that species is the fundamental unit in systematic biology, rigorous species delimitation is crucial for taxonomic studies, yet routine species delimitation remains an ongoing challenge in the taxonomic practice of insects. The two-horned scorpionfly Dicerapanorpa is a small genus in Panorpidae (Mecoptera) endemic to the Qinling-Bashan and He...

The subtribe Monoctonina has long been overlooked when it comes to morphological studies, probably due to the low economic importance of its members. Mainly distributed in high montane areas and forest ecosystems, species of Monoctonina are not often found in large populations and do not parasitize pests of cultivated plants. Our research uncovered...

Mites (Arachnida: Acariformes, Parasitiformes) are the most abundant and species‐rich group of arthropods in soil, but are also diverse in freshwater habitats, on plants, and as symbionts of larger animals. However, assessment of their diversity has been impeded by their small size and often cryptic morphology. As a consequence, published estimates...

The Masoninae (type genus Masona van Achterberg) is a widespread but seldom collected group of morphologically aberrant tiny (body length 2 mm or less) wasps that have always been considered as a subfamily of Braconidae, albeit on little supporting evidence. Discovery of a fully winged female of Masona from remote Australia has enabled a reassessme...

Metabarcoding can rapidly determine the species composition of bulk samples and thus aids biodiversity and ecosystem assessment. However, it is essential to use primer sets that minimize amplification bias among taxa to maximize species recovery. Despite this fact, the performance of primer sets employed for metabarcoding terrestrial arthropods has...

The present study provides a DNA barcode library for the world Zygaenidae (Lepidoptera). This study reports 1031 sequence data of the COI gene DNA barcodes for more than 240 species in four of the five subfamilies of the family Zygaenidae. This is about 20% of the world Zygaenidae species. Our results demonstrate the specificity of the COI gene seq...

36 Forensic studies often require the determination of biological materials to a species level. As such, DNA-37 based approaches to identification, particularly DNA barcoding, are attracting increased interest. The 38 capacity of DNA barcodes to assign newly encountered specimens to a species relies upon access to 39 informatics platforms, such as...

The aim of the study was to establish a nationwide barcode library for the most diverse group of Austrian Lepidoptera, the Noctuoidea, with 5 families (Erebidae, Euteliidae, Noctuidae, Nolidae, Notodontidae) and around 690 species. Altogether, 3431 DNA barcode sequences from COI gene (cytochrome c oxidase 1) belonging to 671 species were gathered,...

The aim of the study was to establish a nationwide barcode library for the most diverse group of Austrian Lepidoptera, the Noctuoidea, with 5 families (Erebidae, Euteliidae, Noctuidae, Nolidae, Notodontidae) and around 690 species. Altogether, 3431 DNA barcode sequences from COI gene (cytochrome c oxidase 1) belonging to 671 species were gathered,...

DNA barcoding is highly effective for identifying specimens once a reference sequence library is available for the species assemblage targeted for analysis. Despite the great need for an improved capacity to identify the insect pests of crops, the use of DNA barcoding is constrained by the lack of a well-parameterized reference library. The current...