ORCID
- Robert Puschendorf: 0000-0002-8105-171X
Abstract
Although insects are fundamental to understanding and conserving global biodiversity, they are vastly understudied. Here, we present a national inventory of Costa Rican insects based upon 3.78 million DNA barcodes representing 152 891 Barcode Index Numbers (BINs, proxies for species) from 28 localities sampled from 2017 to 2023 through the national BioAlfa program of Costa Rica. Although only 3.6% of BINs are linked to Linnean species, barcode-based community analyses revealed strong, consistent ecogeographic structure. Clustering of BIN data using bootstrapped Jaccard distances revealed seven distinct mainland assemblages and a distinct island cluster, shaped primarily by Costa Rica’s mountain ranges, elevation, and slope orientation. Separate analyses for Coleoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, and Lepidoptera coupled with analyses focused on some of their largest families (e.g., Braconidae, Cecidomyiidae, Cicadellidae, Erebidae, and Staphylinidae) confirmed these patterns and further revealed extremely high species turnover with most BINs being exclusive to a single region or locality. Our results reveal limited overlap of insect communities across ecosystems, implying that each life zone harbors unique taxonomic assemblages. Large-scale DNA barcoding has detected fine-grained spatial structure, providing a genomic framework for biodiversity monitoring and conservation in diverse tropical regions undergoing rapid environmental change.
DOI Link
Publication Date
2026-08-07
Publication Title
Genome
Volume
69
ISSN
0831-2796
Acceptance Date
2026-05-25
Deposit Date
2026-08-08
Funding
CFI's Major Science Infrastructure program, MSI, 42450, Canada's New Frontiers in Research Fund, NFRFT-2020-00073, Walder Foundation of Chicago
Keywords
COI, Costa Rica, DNA barcodes, distributions, diversity, insects
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
First Page
1
Last Page
26
Recommended Citation
Hernández Ugalde, J., Janzen, D., Hallwachs, W., Kohlmann, B., Hebert, P., Brown, B., Whitfield, J., Fernández-Triana, J., Fernández Ugalde, R., Phillips Rodriguez, E., Zúñiga, R., Smith, M., Steinke, D., Sharky, M., Quicke, D., Manjunath, R., & Puschendorf, R. (2026) 'Large-scale DNA barcoding reveals highly distinct insect distribution patterns across Costa Rican ecosystems', Genome, 69, pp. 1-26. Available at: 10.1139/gen-2025-0128
