DNA barcoding of more than one million insect specimens indicates that at least one third of California's insect biodiversity remains undiscovered

Insects are the most diverse terrestrial organisms, yet they are underrepresented in large-scale conservation assessments. To address this gap, the California Insect Barcoding Initiative is developing a publicly accessible, statewide DNA-barcode reference library for California insects to support scalable surveys, establish baseline biodiversity measurements, and generate potential distribution maps that inform conservation planning. Specimens are collected with a hybrid strategy that combines standardized Malaise trapping, to enable replicable sampling, and opportunistic collecting, to maximize taxonomic coverage. To date, we have barcoded over one million specimens; preliminary completeness analyses suggest that current sampling captures roughly 65–69% of the fauna, implying a conservative minimum of circa 61,000 insect species in California. Using all sequenced specimen records, we generated rule-based spatial range interpolations constrained by ecoregion and vegetation type, and used these to infer spatial patterns in insect species richness across the state. We identify areas of both high and low potential species richness, with current peaks in the Southern California Mountains ecoregion and the Mojave Basin and Range ecoregion. Our species richness estimates and spatial patterns are explicitly provisional and are expected to evolve as sampling gaps are addressed. Finally, we make all sequence data, specimen images, and occurrence records publicly available via the Barcode of Life Datasystem. This ongoing effort constitutes the first large-scale DNA barcode-based survey for California insects, providing an expandable foundation for tracking temporal change, testing drivers of insect diversity, and prioritizing regions for conservation and targeted inventory.

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Journal
Ecography
Published
2026-11-04
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08572
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.81

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article

DNA barcoding of more than one million insect specimens indicates that at least one third of California's insect biodiversity remains undiscovered

Kevin L. Keegan, G. W. Forister, S. V. Korneyev, Eva S. Horna Lowell et al.
1 citations
Ecography
Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies
2.81
article

DNA barcoding of more than one million insect specimens indicates that at least one third of California's insect biodiversity remains undiscovered

Kevin L. Keegan, G. W. Forister, S. V. Korneyev, Eva S. Horna Lowell, Matthew H. Van Dam, Glen Fine, Jacob A. Gorneau, K Schneider, Elizabeth H. T. Hiroyasu, Daniel Gluesenkamp, Valerie Levesque‐Beaudin, Brad Balukjian, Giar‐Ann Kung, Brian Lee Fisher, Denise C. Montelongo, Julia Betz, Ben Leach, Natalia Von Ellenrieder, Vanessa Verdecia, David L. Wagner, Brian Victor Brown, Spencer Kelvin Monckton, P. Horsley, Laura Gaudette, Sujeevan Ratnasingham, Mikko Pentinsaari, Diana Phan, Christina M. Buck, B. K. Maples, Christiane Weirauch, Martin Hauser, Christopher C Grinter, Austin J. Baker, Colleen Kamoroff, P. Signe White, Nathan Tang, Peter T. Oboyski, Megan Barkdull, Katja C. Seltmann, John S. Ascher, Michael W. Nee, Christina L. Boser, Peter H. Kerr, John M. Heraty, Orlando Romeo, Laura Melissa Guzman, Stephanie Castillo, Franklyn Cala-Riquelme, Lauren A. Esposito, Shahan Derkarabetian, Juan Grados, Amanda Kaye Hodson, Avas Pakrashi, Michael Wall, Leslie S. Saul-Gershenz, C. Hymes, Scott Hardage, Lorenzo Fraysse, Michael Nance, Nomena F. Rasoarimalala, Michael J. Sharkey, Evgeny Zakharov, Cristina P. Sandoval, Jayme E Sones, Hilary Bayer, Christiana Mojica, Emma Mathilde Kurstjens, Rebecca Stiling, Edeline Anthoniraj, Kipp Pow, Lauren Tham, Rachel Allingham, Kelsey Bares, Michael Gengo, Samantha Richey, Ellie Deer, Sara Fairchild, Martin Melia, Michael Schweiker, Paul D. N. Hebert, Jen Bayer, Elliott Allen, Sylvia Reyes, Elise Vasquez, Joe Miller, Sarah Nguyen, Jesse Laine, Jacob Jones, Stevie L. Steele, Shayda Abidi, Doug Yanega, Socrates Letana, J. R. Blair, Julia Perez, S. Kennedy Pike, Jakob Woodall, Wil Valtakis
article en
1 citations

Abstract

Insects are the most diverse terrestrial organisms, yet they are underrepresented in large-scale conservation assessments. To address this gap, the California Insect Barcoding Initiative is developing a publicly accessible, statewide DNA-barcode reference library for California insects to support scalable surveys, establish baseline biodiversity measurements, and generate potential distribution maps that inform conservation planning. Specimens are collected with a hybrid strategy that combines standardized Malaise trapping, to enable replicable sampling, and opportunistic collecting, to maximize taxonomic coverage. To date, we have barcoded over one million specimens; preliminary completeness analyses suggest that current sampling captures roughly 65–69% of the fauna, implying a conservative minimum of circa 61,000 insect species in California. Using all sequenced specimen records, we generated rule-based spatial range interpolations constrained by ecoregion and vegetation type, and used these to infer spatial patterns in insect species richness across the state. We identify areas of both high and low potential species richness, with current peaks in the Southern California Mountains ecoregion and the Mojave Basin and Range ecoregion. Our species richness estimates and spatial patterns are explicitly provisional and are expected to evolve as sampling gaps are addressed. Finally, we make all sequence data, specimen images, and occurrence records publicly available via the Barcode of Life Datasystem. This ongoing effort constitutes the first large-scale DNA barcode-based survey for California insects, providing an expandable foundation for tracking temporal change, testing drivers of insect diversity, and prioritizing regions for conservation and targeted inventory.

Ecography
University of California, Riverside (US), École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (FR), University of Southern California (US), The Nature Conservancy (US), California Department of Food and Agriculture (US), Carnegie Museum of Natural History (US), Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (CA), United States Fish and Wildlife Service (US), California State University, Monterey Bay (US), North Carolina State University (US), University of Connecticut (US), University of California, Santa Barbara (US), SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (US), National University of Singapore (SG), University of California, Santa Cruz (US), National University of San Marcos (PE), Cornell University (US), Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (US), San Diego Natural History Museum (US), California Academy of Sciences (US), The Nature Conservancy (CO), McGuire Institute (US), Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (CA), Stillwater Sciences (United States) (US), San Francisco State University (US), University of Guelph (CA), University of California, Davis (US), University of California, Berkeley (US)
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Life on land
Openalex Percentile: Top 18%
Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies
2.81
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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