New paper in Integrative Zoology!

Our tardigradologists, together with intern students and Diego Fontaneto from CNR IRSA (Verbania, Italy), have just published a fantastic study in Integrative Zoology on tardigrade COI metabarcoding.

Working with microscopic organisms like tardigrades is challenging due to their tiny size. Because of this, they often go unnoticed, making it difficult to study their diversity. Manually extracting tardigrades from samples and conducting the necessary lab work is extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming. On top of that, species identification typically requires a significant amount of taxonomic expertise, which is increasingly scarce.

DNA-based methods like metabarcoding are seen as a promising solution to overcome these challenges and enable high-throughput biodiversity surveys. However, these approaches heavily rely on reference databases containing DNA sequences with accurate taxonomic identifications. In other words, good reference resources are essential for the reliability and usefulness of metabarcoding.

Graphical abstract. The study provides the first curated database of tardigrade COI sequences. A new tardigrade metabarcoding protocol was tested and proved to be highly efficient compared to traditional morphological surveys. The presented approach can also greatly accelerate biodiversity inventories in other meiofaunal groups.

The authors developed an efficient lab protocol for tardigrade COI metabarcoding that starts with sieved sediment samples. They also built a curated reference database of all available COI sequences for tardigrades, ensuring high quality and correct taxonomic assignment. To top it off, they validated their method and showed that it produces results highly consistent with the traditional morphological approach. The outcome is impressive and provides a powerful new resource for other researchers!

Check out the full paper, here, and the open-access preprint version, here.