Airborne environmental DNA metabarcoding detects more diversity, with less sampling effort, than a traditional plant community survey

Table 1 The most common species found in traditional surveys and for each individual survey separately

Traditional survey most common species
Total	September	May
Bouteloua gracilis	Bouteloua gracilis	Bouteloua gracilis
Prosopis glandulosa	Prosopis glandulosa	Laennecia coulteri
Laennecia coulteri	Salsola tragus	Prosopis glandulosa
Helianthus ciliaris	Helianthus ciliaris	Helenium amarum
Helenium amarum	Solanum elaeagnifolium*	Erigeron modestus*
Erigeron modestus*	*Euphorbia lata*	Lepidium densiflorum
Lepidium densiflorum	Kochia scoparia	Helianthus ciliaris
Salsola tragus	*Hopia obtusa*	Teucrium laciniatum
Solanum elaeagnifolium	Quincula lobata*	Ammoselinum popei*
Teucrium laciniatum	*Portulaca oleracea*	Plectocephalus americanus

Sequence data for the species marked with an * were unavailable and thus excluded from comparison with metabarcoding. Additionally, species in bold were not detected by the eDNA surveying method for that respective survey

ISSN: 2730-7182