Derocles SAP, Evans DM, Nichols PC, Evans SA, Lunt DH. Determining plant-leaf miner-parasitoid interactions: a DNA barcoding approach. PLOS One 2015, 10(2), e0117872. Copyright: Copyright: © 2015 Derocles et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. DOI link to article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0117872 Date deposited: 19/10/2016 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Newcastle University ePrints - eprint.ncl.ac.uk RESEARCH ARTICLE Determining Plant – Leaf Miner – Parasitoid Interactions: A DNA Barcoding Approach Stéphane A. P. Derocles*, Darren M. Evans, Paul C. Nichols, S. Aifionn Evans, David H. Lunt School of Biological, Biomedical and Environmental Sciences, University of Hull, Hull, United Kingdom *
[email protected] Abstract A major challenge in network ecology is to describe the full-range of species interactions in a community to create highly-resolved food-webs. We developed a molecular approach based on DNA full barcoding and mini-barcoding to describe difficult to observe plant – leaf miner – parasitoid interactions, consisting of animals commonly regarded as agricultural pests and their natural enemies. We tested the ability of universal primers to amplify the re- OPEN ACCESS maining DNA inside leaf miner mines after the emergence of the insect. We compared the Citation: Derocles SAP, Evans DM, Nichols PC, results of a) morphological identification of adult specimens; b) identification based on the Evans SA, Lunt DH (2015) Determining Plant – Leaf shape of the mines; c) the COI Mini-barcode (130 bp) and d) the COI full barcode (658 bp) Miner – Parasitoid Interactions: A DNA Barcoding Approach.