Nymphomaniacs - you're doing it wrong

Are you a nymphomaniac? Do you go to ridiculous lengths to identify every bug nymph you find? A new research paper suggests you stop. 

Anthocoris nymph

Soil and leaf litter support a diverse arthropod mesofauna, but their diversity is difficult to study due to the high number of species and specimens, small body size, and limited taxonomic knowledge. Immature stages (larvae) are even harder to identify than adults, as their morphology is largely unknown. Therefore larvae are often ignored, even though they may form a substantial proportion of specimens collected. These authors used DNA barcoding to investigate whether the inclusion of larvae provides a more complete taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity profile in leaf litter beetles. Larvae represented up to 38% of specimens per sample, but most of them belong to 2–3 common species. The authors conclude that immature stages may be omitted in ecological studies of arthropods where both adults and larvae co-occur in the same habitat. Caution is needed when larvae and adults do not inhabit the same environment or strongly differ in biology, or when rare species are omitted.

Can immature stages be ignored in studies of forest leaf litter arthropod diversity? A test using Oxford Nanopore DNA barcoding. Insect Conservation and Diversity. 21 November 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12702