Development of a barcoding database for the UK Collembola: early results

We report early results from a project to accumulate COI barcodes from UK Collembola to conrm taxonomy and explore their status at an international level. We validated COI sequences for 48 species of Collembola, ranging from 335–670 bp. Of these, seventeen species matched public sequences of the same name, six species were identiable but the molecular identity disagreed with the morphological identication, and twenty ve species gave no reliable match. The successful matches included accurate matches to BINs from countries far from the UK, including Canada, South Africa and Russia. We suggest that, in many cases, these may have been accidentally transported with horticultural materials

Molecular approaches for studying root herbivores

The use of molecular techniques in insect ecology has expanded rapidly, allowing ever more challenging questions to be addressed. Compared to their aboveground equivalents, root herbivore molecular ecology has received less attention, despite essentially the same ecological questions being of importance in both the above- and belowground ecosystems. Studies so far have concentrated on economically important taxa, using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequencing and a variety of markers to investigate the species identity and relationships, population dynamics and dispersal, distribution, feeding behaviour and interactions with other organisms. Although this has proved useful for elucidating these aspects of their ecology, there remains a need to focus on the functioning of root herbivores in the soil ecosystem. Application of new and emerging technologies developed for aboveground systems will increasingly be applied to those belowground, allowing a focus on root herbivore biology and ecology in the context of ecosystem processes and systems ecology. For the foreseeable future, however, the use of molecular techniques is likely to remain dominated by the need to address pragmatic research questions about specific taxa, notably pests. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd

Biology, ecology, and control of elaterid beetles in agricultural land.

Wireworms, the larvae of click beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae), have had a centuries-long role as major soil insect pests worldwide. With insecticidal control options dwindling, research on click beetle biology and ecology is of increasing importance in the development of new control tactics. Methodological improvements have deepened our understanding of how larvae and adults spatially and temporarily utilize agricultural habitats and interact with their environment. This progress, however, rests with a few pest species, and efforts to obtain comparable knowledge on other economically important elaterids are crucial. There are still considerable gaps in our understanding of female and larval ecology; movement of elaterids within landscapes; and the impact of natural enemies, cultivation practices, and environmental change on elaterid population dynamics. This knowledge will allow generation of multifaceted control strategies, including cultural, physical, and chemical measures, tailored toward species complexes and crops across a range of appropriate spatial scales