Opportunities and challenges in metabarcoding approaches for helminth community identification in wild mammals

Abstract

Despite metabarcoding being widely used to analyse bacterial community composition, its application in parasitological research remains limited. What interest there has been has focused on previously intractable research settings where traditional methods are inappropriate, for example, in longitudinal studies and studies involving endangered species. In settings such as these, non-invasive sampling combined with metabarcoding can provide a fast and accurate assessment of component communities. In this paper we review the use of metabarcoding in the study of helminth communities in wild mammals, outlining the necessary procedures from sample collection to statistical analysis. We highlight the limitations of the metabarcoding approach and speculate on what type of parasitological study would benefit from such methods in the future.

Keywords: cestodes; community ecology; genetic identification; high-throughtput sequencing; mammals; nematodes.