DOI: 10.15468/eycgjr
title: DNA metabarcoding data of arthropods captured with different traps in the southwestern German agricultural landscape

description: The dataset contains data on arthropods which was derived from DNA metabarcoding. The DNA metabarcoding was performed for samples from coloured canopy Malaise traps, caterpillar traps, branch sampling and blue and white pan traps. The traps were selected to capture predominantly flying insects, especially butterflies and hoverflies. They were placed as a defined set in four different habitat types: 'Forest (Beech and oak)', 'Centre of a short rotation coppice', 'Margin of a short rotation coppice' and 'Maize field'. There existed three replicates of each habitat type. The coloured canopy Malaise traps were equipped with blue, yellow and white cotton cloth panels (50 x 35 cm) and hung in a wooden frame four metres above ground. The caterpillar traps consisted of a dark-green plastic tarpaulin, which was stretched between trees and tapered towards the ground. At its lowest point, insects were collected with a capture bottle, which was attached to the tarpoulin with a fine gauze. The branch sampling was conducted by tabbing 100 tree branches and shaking ten trees at each site. In the corn fields, the shaking was replaced by another interval of tabbing. The blue and white pan traps were placed next to each other on a wooden table, one metre above ground. The pans were enlarged at the top with fine gauze to prevent from overfloating in the case of rain. All insects were captured and stored in 96.6% ethanol. The traps were operated in 15-day sampling intervals, each in June, July and August 2021. For DNA metabarcoding, the samples of each sampling interval and method were compiled. The DNA metabarcoding was performed following the method of Hausmann et al (2020): 'Toward a standardized quantitative and qualitative insect monitoring scheme. Ecology and Evolution, 10, 4009–4020'. Briefly, a lysis volume of 5-10 ml of the dried and homogenized composite samples was used for DNA extraction. The mitochondrial Cytochrome c Oxidase subunit I gene (COI) was amplified for species identification (see Leray et al. (2013): 'A new versatile primer set targeting a short fragment of the mitochondrial COI region for metabarcoding metazoan diversity: application for characterizing coral reef fish gut contents. Frontiers in Zoology, 10, 34' and Morinière et al. (2016): 'Species Identification in Malaise Trap Samples by DNA Barcoding Based on NGS Technologies and a Scoring Matrix. PLOS ONE, 11, e0155497'. The resulting metabarcoding data contains the OTU sequences from the samples and their corresponding identities from the Barcode of Life database (BOLD, Ratnasingham and Hebert 2007), the database of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the Ribosomal Database Project (RDP) classifier. For the two databases, the overlap between the OTU sequence and the database entry determined the determination depth (97-100%: species, 95-97%: genus; 90-95%. family, 85-90%: order, 80-85%: class, 75-80%: phylum, &lt;75%: domain). Each taxonomic determination level of the RDP-classifier is additionally displayed with a bootstrap value. The table also provides data on the red list Germany and Bavaria for each entry.