One‐locus‐several‐primers: A strategy to improve the taxonomic and haplotypic coverage in diet metabarcoding studies
Abstract
We investigated the taxonomic coverage and complementarity of three cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene (COI) primer sets based on in silico analyses and we conducted an in vivo evaluation using fecal and spider web samples from different invertivores, environments, and geographic locations.We formalized the “one‐locus‐several‐primer‐sets” (OLSP) strategy, that is, the use of several primer sets that target the same locus (here the first part of the COI gene) and the same group of taxa (here invertebrates) to minimize false negatives by increasing total coverage through multiple primer sets. The OLSP strategy produces largely overlapping and comparable sequences, which cannot be achieved when targeting different loci.
Type
Publication
In Ecology and Evolution
