DOI: 10.5061/dryad.x0k6djhq0
title: COI Barcode sequences for arthropod species from the high Appalachian Mountains, USA

description: Developing systematic conservation plans depends on a wealth of
 information on a region's biodiversity. For 'dark taxa'
 such as arthropods, such data is usually very incomplete and in most cases
 left out from assessments. Sky islands are important and often fragile
 biodiversity hotspots. Southern Appalachian high-elevation spruce-fir
 forests represent a particularly threatened sky-island ecosystem, hosting
 numerous endemic and threatened species, but their arthropods remain
 understudied. Here we use voucher-based megabarcoding to explore genetic
 differentiation among leaf-litter arthropod communities of these
 highlands, and to examine the extent to which they represent dispersed
 communities of more or less coherent species, manageable as a distributed
 unit. We assembled a dataset comprising &gt;6000 COI sequences
 representing diverse arthropod groups to assess species richness and
 sharing across peaks and ranges. Comparisons were standardized across taxa
 using automated species delimitation, measuring endemism levels by
 putative species. Species-richness was high, with sites hosting from
 86-199 litter arthropod species (not including mites or myriapods).
 Community profiles suggest that around one-fourth of these species are
 unique to single sky islands and more than one-third of all species are
 limited to a particular range. Across major taxa, endemicity was lowest in
 Araneae, and highest in neglected groups like Isopoda, Pseudoscorpionida,
 Protura, and Diplura. Southern Appalachian sky islands of spruce-fir
 habitat host significantly distinct leaf litter arthropod communities,
 with high levels of local endemicity. This is the first work to provide
 such a clear picture of peak and range uniqueness for a taxonomically
 broad sample. Ensuring the protection of a sizeable fraction of
 high-elevation litter species richness will therefore require attention at
 a relatively fine spatial scale.
description: Data files are nexus formatted COI sequences, obtained via
 indexed PCR (primers BF2-BR2). These were pooled for Illumina and Nanopore
 sequencing, demultiplexed, and cleaned through quality filtering in
 ONTBarcoder (Srivathsan & Meier) and bbTools.
description: Any phylogenetic software that reads nexus format (Mesquite,
 PAUP*, MEGA, etc..)
description: # High Appalachia Litter Arthropod barcodes *** These data are cytochrome
 oxidase I barcode region DNA sequences, in nexus formatted files, readable
 by numerous phylogenetic and population genetics programs, such as
 Mesquite, PAUP\*, Popart, IQ tree, etc. ## Description of the data and
 file structure Each data file contains the sequences for one major group
 of arthropods. 'Taxa' (line headers) are morphospecies codes,
 which are defined and linked to vouchers, identifications, and localities
 in a supplemental data (MS Excel) file referencing this deposit in the
 publication, and duplicated herein. ## Sharing/Access information Links to
 other publicly accessible locations of the data: Sequences are also
 uploaded to GenBank, accession numbers OR169027-OR174759. Data was derived
 from the following sources: Illumina, Sanger, and Nanopore sequencing ##
 Code/Software N/A