More than a third of known non-native species in the continental United States are animals. Of these animal species, 90% are invertebrates. As part of monitoring abundance and diversity of the ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae), NEON (the National Ecological Observatory Network) runs pitfall traps using standardized methods at 47 sites across the United States. Once the ground beetles have been removed, NEON retains the remainder as Invertebrate By-Catch. Using this bycatch, we use metagenomic techniques developed for Environmental DNA sampling to non-destructively detect taxa in the sample. We also create high resolution digital images of the sample, allowing us to vet the results of the eDNA sequencing as well as estimate taxon abundance. Using 170 pitfall samples from across the NEON network, I show how these methods can be used to detect potential unknown as well as monitor known non-native species.
Results/Conclusions
We detected non-native species from several phyla, including Annelida, Arthropoda and Mollusca. Of the 4702 species level taxa identified from these 170 pitfall samples, we detected 18 annelid species and 173 arthropod species known to be non-native in the continental United States. The arthropods represent 17 spider species and 128 insect species. While all of these samples were taken from a single year, NEON samples across time will allow us to generate demography data for both native and non-native invertebrate species. This data will provide data for species management as well as hypothesis tests for noth applied and theoretical studies.