Monthly Archives: July 2015

Metagenome skimming for phylogenetic community ecology: a new era in biodiversity research

It is now well recognized that considering species evolutionary history is crucial for understanding the processes driving community assembly (Cavender-Bares et al. 2009). Considerable efforts have been made to integrate phylogenetics and community ecology into a single theoretical framework. Yet, assessing phylogenetic structure at the community scale remains a great challenge, in particular for poorly known organisms. While DNA metabarcoding is increasingly used for assessing taxonomic composition of complex communities from environmental samples, biases and limitations of this technique can pre- clude the retrieval of information on phylogenetic community structure. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Andújar et al. (2015) demonstrate that shotgun sequencing of bulk samples of soil beetles and subsequent reconstruction of mitochondrial genomes can provide a solid phylogenetic framework to estimate species diversity and gain insights into the mechanisms underlying the spatial turnover of soil mesofaunal assemblages. This work highlights the enormous potential of ‘metagenome skimming’ not only for improving the current standards of DNA-based biodiversity assessment but also for opening up the application of phylogenetic community ecology to hyperdiverse and poorly known biota, which was heretofore inconceivable.

           Papadopoulou A, Taberlet P, Zinger L. (2015) Molecular Ecology 24: 3515-3517.

Phylogenetic community ecology of soil biodiversity using mitochondrial metagenomics

Andújar C, Arribas P, Ruzicka F, Crampton-Platt A, Timmermans MJTN, Vogler A (2015)  Molecular Ecology 24: 3603-3617.

High-throughput DNA methods hold great promise for the study of taxonomically intractable mesofauna of the soil. Here, we assess species diversity and community structure in a phylogenetic framework, by sequencing total DNA from bulk specimen samples and assembly of mitochondrial genomes. The combination of mitochondrial metagenomics and DNA barcode sequencing of 1494 specimens in 69 soil samples from three geographic regions in southern Iberia revealed >300 species of soil Coleoptera (beetles) from a broad spectrum of phylogenetic lineages. A set of 214 mitochondrial sequences longer than 3000bp was generated and used to estimate a well supported phylogenetic tree of the order Coleoptera. Shorter sequences, including cox1 barcodes, were placed on this mitogenomic tree. Raw Illumina reads were mapped against all available sequences to test for species present in local samples. This approach simultaneously established the species richness, phylogenetic composition, and community turnover at species and phylogenetic levels. We find a strong signature of vertical structuring in soil fauna that shows high local community differentiation between deep-soil and superficial horizons at phylogenetic levels. Within the two vertical layers, turnover among regions was primarily at the tip (species) level, and was stronger in the deep-soil than leaf litter communities, pointing to layer-mediated drivers determining species diversification, spatial structure and evolutionary assembly of soil communities. This integrated phylogenetic framework opens the application of phylogenetic community ecology to the mesofauna of the soil, among the most diverse and least-well understood ecosystems, and will propel both theoretical and applied soil science.

Download Andújar et al. 2015