Rudolf Meier

Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity | MFN

Ultra close-range photogrammetry is widely used for metrological analyses and is gaining popularity in biodiversity research as it provides multiple perspectives for the same specimen. Handling small objects, such as insects, often requires fixing them with pins to position them in front of the camera. However, this method can damage the specimen,...

EntoSieve: New automated tool for fast, accurate size-sorting of bulk insect samples! Perfect for boosting DNA megabarcoding & metabarcoding projects. DIY low-cost device, gentle on specimens and yet efficient.

Background Zoology’s dark matter comprises hyperdiverse, poorly known taxa that are numerically dominant but largely unstudied, even in temperate regions where charismatic taxa are well understood. Dark taxa are everywhere, but high diversity, abundance, and small size have historically stymied their study. We demonstrate how entomological dark mat...

The open ecosystem (e.g. grasslands, prairies, shrublands) tends to be ecologically less stable than closed one (i.e. forests) and encompassess higher spatial heterogeneity in terms of environmental diversity. Such differences are expected to differentially constrain the diversity and structure of the communities that inhabit each of them, but iden...

Background Symbiotic relationships with diverse microorganisms are crucial for many aspects of insect biology. However, while our understanding of insect taxonomic diversity and the distribution of insect species in natural communities is limited, we know much less about their microbiota. In the era of rapid biodiversity declines, as researchers in...

With the increasing loss of insect species, their ecosystem services such as pollination of plants and pest control are also under threat. This means that more intense monitoring is needed, but this poses many challenges: Collecting is comparatively easy and carried out at many locations worldwide using standardized methods such as Malaise traps th...

Species extinctions increase at a global scale; therefore, rapid inventorying of our planet's biodiversity is becoming more and more important. As insects represent the highest portion of the fauna and play key ecological roles, it is a pressing need to investigate their biodiversity and accelerate species discovery, especially for understudied ins...

Background Zoology’s dark matter comprises hyperdiverse, poorly known taxa that are numerically dominant but largely unstudied, even in temperate regions where charismatic taxa are well understood. It is everywhere, but high diversity, abundance, and small size have historically stymied its study. We demonstrate how entomological dark matter can be...

None of the global targets for protecting nature are currently met, although humanity is critically dependent on biodiversity. A significant issue is the lack of data for most biodiverse regions of the planet where the use of frugal methods for biomonitoring would be particularly important because the available funding for monitoring is insufficien...

Holistic insect monitoring needs scalable techniques to overcome taxon biases, determine species abundances, and gather functional traits for all species. This requires that we address taxonomic impediments and the paucity of data on abundance, biomass and functional traits. We here outline how these data deficiencies could be addressed at scale. T...

Background Symbiotic relationships with diverse microorganisms are crucial for many aspects of insect biology. However, while our understanding of insect taxonomic diversity and the distribution of insect species in natural communities is limited, we know much less about their microbiota. In the era of rapid biodiversity declines, as researchers in...

DNA barcodes are useful in biodiversity research, but sequencing barcodes with dye termination methods (“Sanger sequencing”) has been so time-consuming and expensive that DNA barcodes are not as widely used as they should be. Fortunately, MinION sequencers from Oxford Nanopore Technologies have recently emerged as a cost-effective and efficient alt...

"There are no scientifically justified obstacles to protecting biodiversity in all its beauty and diversity. There are only six years left to achieve the biodiversity targets by 2030. We must work together now to get there in time." In the 10 Must Knows from Biodiversity Science 2024, 64 scientists have further developed their well-founded and div...

The use of DNA barcoding is well established for specimen identification and large‐scale biodiversity discovery, but remains underutilized for time‐sensitive applications such as rapid species discovery in field stations, identifying pests, citizen science projects, and authenticating food. The main reason is that existing express barcoding workflo...

Understanding and combatting biodiversity loss are critical tasks facing our planet. They are made especially difficult because much of the earth’s biodiversity is concentrated in abundant and species-rich groups of invertebrates like insects. Traditionally, samples of insects have been analyzed manually by experts using morphology. Not only does t...

There is an urgent need for reliable data on the impacts of deforestation on tropical biodiversity. The city-state of Singapore has one of the most detailed biodiversity records in the tropics, dating back to the turn of the 19th century. In 1819, Singapore was almost entirely covered in primary forest, but this has since been largely cleared. We c...

Most arthropod species are undescribed and hidden in specimen‐rich samples that are difficult to sort to species using morphological characters. For such samples, sorting to putative species with DNA barcodes is an attractive alternative, but needs cost‐effective techniques that are suitable for use in many laboratories around the world. Barcoding...

Synchronous multispecific coral spawning generally occurs annually and forms an integral part of the coral life cycle. Apart from spawning times and species participation, however, much else remains unknown. Here, we applied eDNA metabarcoding to study two tropical reef sites of contrasting coral cover before, during, and after, coral spawning. Usi...

p>Understanding and combatting biodiversity loss are critical tasks facing our planet. They are made especially difficult because much of the earth’s biodiversity is concentrated in abundant and species-rich groups of invertebrates like insects. Traditionally, samples of insects have been analyzed manually by experts using morphology. Not only does...

p>Understanding and combatting biodiversity loss are critical tasks facing our planet. They are made especially difficult because much of the earth’s biodiversity is concentrated in abundant and species-rich groups of invertebrates like insects. Traditionally, samples of insects have been analyzed manually by experts using morphology. Not only does...

We demonstrate the power of integrative taxonomy by carrying out a revision of the fungus gnats (Diptera: Mycetophilidae) of Singapore. The specimens material of 496 Malaise trap samples was caught by 71 traps placed at 107 collecting sites in different habitats of Singapore: mangroves, swamp forests, freshwater swamps, primary rainforests, and dif...

We are entering the 6th mass extinction event on the planet with scarcely any data for "dark taxa" that comprise most animal species. These taxa have been neglected, because conventional taxonomic methods are not well-equipped to process tens of thousands of specimens belonging to thousands of species. We here test a new protocol for tackling the d...

Understanding global patterns of genetic diversity is essential for describing, monitoring, and preserving life on Earth. To date, efforts to map macrogenetic patterns have been restricted to vertebrates, which comprise only a small fraction of Earth’s biodiversity. Here, we construct a global map of predicted insect mitochondrial genetic diversity...

Most animal species are undescribed and hidden in biodiversity samples consisting of thousands of specimens that are difficult to sort to species using morphological characters. Sorting with DNA barcodes is an attractive alternative, but needs cost-effective techniques that are suitable for use in many laboratories around the world so that barcodin...

We present the first complete mitochondrial genomes for Anaspidacea by sequencing 24 specimens from 12 different species in four genera (AnaspidesThomson, 1894; ParanaspidesSmith, 1908; AllanaspidesSwain, Wilson, Hickman & Ong, 1970; and MicraspidesNicholls, 1931). We recovered 20 complete (13 protein coding genes, two ribosomal RNA genes, 22 trans...

Most of arthropod biodiversity is unknown to science. Consequently, it has been unclear whether insect communities around the world are dominated by the same or different taxa. This question can be answered through standardized sampling of biodiversity followed by estimation of species diversity and community composition with DNA barcodes. Here thi...

Male sexual ornaments often evolve rapidly and are thought to be costly, thus contributing to sexual size dimorphism. However, little is known about their developmental costs, and even less about costs associated with structural complexity. Here, we quantified the size and complexity of three morphologically elaborate sexually dimorphic male orname...

1. DNA barcodes are useful for species-level sorting of specimen samples, but rarely used in time-sensitive projects that require species richness estimates or identification of pest or invasive species within hours. The main reason is that existing express barcoding workflows are either too expensive or can only be carried out in very well equippe...

Insects are crucial for ecosystem health but climate change and pesticide use are driving massive insect decline. To mitigate this loss, we need new and effective monitoring techniques. Over the past decade there has been a shift to DNA-based techniques. We describe key emerging techniques for sample collection. We suggest that the selection of too...

Abstract Bioassessment of freshwater quality with eDNA is a powerful alternative to traditional methods involving collecting, sorting, and identifying metazoan taxa with morphology (e.g., macroinvertebrates). Particularly attractive for routine monitoring would be an eDNA method that uses a remote‐controlled boat for collecting small volumes of wat...

Abstract Vertebrate communities can be surveyed by metabarcoding DNA obtained from invertebrates (iDNA). However, little attention has been paid to the interaction between the invertebrate and vertebrate species. We here test for specialization by sampling the dung and carrion fly community of a swamp forest remnant along a disturbance gradient (10...

The schizophoran superfamily Ephydroidea (Diptera: Cyclorrhapha) includes eight families, ranging from the well-known vinegar flies (Drosophilidae) and shore flies (Ephydridae), to several small, relatively unusual groups, the phylogenetic placement of which has been particularly challenging for systematists. An extraordinary diversity in life hist...

Current understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes underlying island biodiversity is heavily shaped by empirical data from plants and birds, although arthropods comprise the overwhelming majority of known animal species, and as such can provide key insights into processes governing biodiversity. Novel high throughput sequencing (HTS) ap...

Metabarcoding of vertebrate DNA obtained from invertebrates (iDNA) has been used to survey vertebrate communities, but we here show that it can also be used to study species interactions between invertebrates and vertebrates in a spatial context. We sampled the dung and carrion fly community of a swamp forest remnant along a disturbance gradient (1...

Most of arthropod biodiversity is unknown to science. For this reason, it has been unclear whether insect communities around the world are dominated by the same or different taxa. This question can be answered through standardized sampling of biodiversity followed by estimation of species diversity and community composition with DNA sequences. This...

Here, we provide the first complete mitochondrial genomes for two higher taxa of Peracarida, Lophogastrida and Stygiomysida. We examined Lophogaster typicus as a representative of Lophogastrida and Spelaeomysis bottazzii as a representative of Stygiomysida. Both mitogenomes have all typical metazoan genes (13 protein‐coding genes, two ribosomal RNA...

New, rapid, accurate, scalable, and cost-effective species discovery and delimitation methods are needed for tackling "dark taxa", here defined as groups for which <10% of all species are described and the estimated diversity exceeds 1000 species. Species delimitation for these taxa should be based on multiple data sources ("integrative taxonomy")...

Our current understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes underlying island biodiversity is heavily shaped by empirical data from plants and birds, although arthropods comprise the overwhelming majority of known animal species. This is due to inherent problems with obtaining high-quality arthropod data. Novel high throughput sequencing app...

Understanding global patterns of genetic diversity (GD) is essential to describe, monitor, and preserve the processes giving rise to life on Earth. To date, efforts to map macrogenetic patterns have been restricted to vertebrate groups that comprise a small fraction of Earth's biodiversity. Here, we construct the first global map of predicted insec...

Many phoretic relationships between arthropods are understudied because of taxonomic impediments. We here illustrate for avian lice riding on hippoboscid flies how new natural history data on phoretic relationships can be acquired quickly with modern and cost‐effective barcoding techniques. Most avian lice are host‐specific, but some can arrive on...

Invertebrate biodiversity remains poorly understood although it comprises much of the terrestrial animal biomass, most species, and supplies many ecosystem services. The main obstacle is specimen‐rich samples obtained with quantitative sampling techniques (e.g., Malaise trapping). Traditional sorting requires manual handling, while molecular techni...

Bioassessment of freshwater quality via eDNA is rapidly developing into a powerful alternative to traditional methods involving collecting, sorting, and identifying macroinvertebrates based on morphology. Particularly attractive would be methods that can use remote-controlled boats for sampling because it would allow for cost-effective, and frequen...

Many phoretic relationships between insects are understudied because of taxonomic impediments. We here illustrate for avian lice riding on hippoboscid flies how new natural history data on phoretic relationships can be acquired quickly with NGS barcoding. Most avian lice are host-specific, but some can arrive on new hosts by riding hippoboscid flie...

Background Blowflies are ubiquitous insects, often shiny and metallic, and the larvae of many species provide important ecosystem services (e.g., recycling carrion) and are used in forensics and debridement therapy. Yet, the taxon has repeatedly been recovered to be para- or polyphyletic, and the lack of a well-corroborated phylogeny has prevented...

Background DNA barcodes are a useful tool for discovering, understanding, and monitoring biodiversity which are critical tasks at a time of rapid biodiversity loss. However, widespread adoption of barcodes requires cost-effective and simple barcoding methods. We here present a workflow that satisfies these conditions. It was developed via “innovati...

Background The world’s fast disappearing mangrove forests have low plant diversity and are often assumed to also have a species-poor insect fauna. We here compare the tropical arthropod fauna across a freshwater swamp and six different forest types (rain-, swamp, dry-coastal, urban, freshwater swamp, mangroves) based on 140,000 barcoded specimens b...

Halting biodiversity decline is one of the most critical challenges for humanity, but monitoring biodiversity is hampered by taxonomic impediments. One impediment is the large number of undescribed species (here called “dark taxon impediment”) whereas another is caused by the large number of superficial species descriptions, that can only be resolv...

Studies of insect mating behaviour usually focus on what happens before and during copulation. Few pay close attention to the actions needed to end copulation. However, genital separation after copulation is likely to be an important cause of mechanical stress and injuries because it often involves the withdrawal of heavily armoured male intromitte...

Invertebrate biodiversity remains poorly explored although it comprises much of the terrestrial animal biomass, more than 90% of the species-level diversity, supplies many ecosystem services. Increasing anthropogenic threads also require regular monitoring of invertebrate communities. The main obstacle is specimen- and species-rich samples consisti...

Background: The black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) is the most promising insect candidate for nutrient-recycling through bioconversion of organic waste into biomass, thereby improving sustainability of protein supplies for animal feed and facilitating transition to a circular economy. Contrary to conventional livestock, genetic resources of farm...

Background The black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) is the most promising insect candidate for nutrient-recycling through bioconversion of organic waste into biomass, thereby improving sustainability of protein supplies for animal feed and facilitating transition to a circular economy. Contrary to conventional livestock, genetic resources of farme...

Halting biodiversity decline is one of the most critical challenges for humanity, but biodiversity assessment and monitoring are hampered by taxonomic impediments. We here distinguish between a "dark taxon impediment" caused by a large number of undescribed species and a "superficial description impediment" caused by species descriptions so impreci...

New, rapid, accurate, scalable, and cost-effective species discovery and delimitation methods are needed for tackling 'dark taxa', that we here define as clades for which <10% of all species are described and the estimated diversity exceeds 1000 species. Species delimitation should be based on multiple data sources ('integrative taxonomy') but coll...

Background DNA barcodes are a useful tool for discovering, understanding, and monitoring biodiversity which are critical tasks at a time of rapid biodiversity loss. However, widespread adoption of barcodes requires cost-effective and simple barcoding methods. We here present a workflow that satisfies these conditions. It was developed via “innovati...

Background The most species-rich radiation of animal life in the 66 million years following the Cretaceous extinction event is that of schizophoran flies: a third of fly diversity including Drosophila fruit fly model organisms, house flies, forensic blow flies, agricultural pest flies, and many other well and poorly known true flies. Rapid diversif...

Ticks of small mammals pose a significant risk to public health but these hazards are poorly understood in the tropics due to the paucity of information on the disease ecology of ticks in these regions. Mapping and quantifying the diversity of small mammal/tick networks and the effects of habitat on these medically important systems is key to disea...

We here compare the tropical arthropod fauna across a freshwater swamp and six different forest types (rain-, swamp, dry-coastal, urban, freshwater swamp, mangroves) based on 140,000 specimens belonging to ca. 8,500 species. Surprisingly, we find that mangroves, a globally imperiled habitat that had been expected to be species-poor for insects, are...

Sea anemones are sedentary marine animals that tend to disperse via planktonic larvae and are predicted to have high population connectivity in undisturbed habitats. We test whether two sea anemone species living in two different tidal zones of a highly disturbed marine environment can maintain high genetic connectivity. More than 1000 loci with si...

Background: Metamorphosis remains one of the most complicated and poorly understood processes in insects. This is particularly so for the very dynamic transformations that take place within the pupal sheath of holometabolous insects. Only few studies address these transformations especially with regard to cranial structures of those holometabolous...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) with metabarcoding or metagenomics will likely become a major biomonitoring tool in the 21st century, perhaps even more so in the face of increased coastal urbanization and its associated effects such as pollution, land reclamation, and seabed dredging. Together, these impacts and the consequent high turbidity pose severe c...

A significant number of Southeast Asian mammal species described in the 19th and 20th century were subsequently synonymized and are now considered subspecies. Many are affected by rapid habitat loss which creates an urgent need to re-assess the conservation status based on species boundaries established with molecular data. However, such data are l...

Background The black soldier fly (Diptera: Stratiomyidae, Hermetia illucens) is renowned for its bioconversion ability of organic matter, and is the worldwide most widely used source of insect protein. Despite varying extensively in morphology, it is widely assumed that all black soldier flies belong to the same species, Hermetia illucens. We here...

Polymorphic Batesian mimics exhibit multiple protective morphs that each mimic a different noxious model. Here, we study the genomic transitions leading to the evolution of different mimetic wing patterns in the polymorphic Mocker Swallowtail Papilio dardanus. We generated a draft genome (231 Mb over 30 chromosomes) and re-sequenced individuals of...