However, most often difficulties in treating the samples and lack of specialists capable of adequate species identification hamper incorporation of biodiversity investigations into the routine monitoring programs.
As more sequence data are generated from high-throughput sequencing and more phylogenies are published across the tree of life, the time and expense of calculating multiple, reliable biodiversity metrics will become routine.
In 1992, E. O. Wilson noted that as the cost of DNA sequencing decreased and became routine, scientists would be fully prepared to address the question of how much biodiversity exists on Earth.
The use of recently introduced next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches in biodiversity science has the potential to further extend the application of DNA information for routine biomonitoring applications to an unprecedented scale.
The use of DNA sequences ("DNA barcoding") in extensive phylogenetic studies has also revealed an effectively high level of hidden biodiversity [13] [16], suggesting that molecular data should be incorporated by taxonomists as a matter of routine [2].
For example, the earliest descriptions of anomalous latitudinal gradients in parasitoid diversity pre-date the routine use of both large-scale trapping [ 14, 46] and molecular methods [ 47, 48] in biodiversity research.
This paper investigates the performance of routine estimators of macrofaunal abundance and species richness, which are variables that have been widely used to infer predictable patterns of biodiversity across a gradient of beach types.
That they damage biodiversity.
Biodiversity & mass extinctions.
How is local biodiversity responding?
