Scientists have discovered thousands of unknown insect species, also known as Dark Taxa, in Bavaria using DNA barcoding. The global scientific community has only identified a fraction of the world’s animal and plant species, with an overview of the 2.2 million known species recently published in the Tree of Life. However, researchers from the Zoological State Collection in Munich have discovered a large number of new insect species as part of the national DNA barcoding project, German Barcode of Life III (GBOL III), proving that even the heavily human-influenced landscape of Central Europe still harbors unknown animal species.
Of the approximately 33,000 insect species known in Germany, around two-thirds belong to the Diptera or Hymenoptera families. However, the full range of Diptera species, including flies and mosquitoes, has not yet been fully explored due to their small size, making it difficult to identify them based on their appearance. Genetic methods, such as DNA barcoding, are increasingly being used to determine the species of these small insects. The GBOL III: Dark Taxa project aims to find and identify previously unknown species, creating a database that can identify every animal in Germany.
The team led by Caroline Chimeno conducted DNA barcoding of flies and mosquitoes in Bavaria over six years, capturing insects with flight traps at various locations in the Allgäu Alps, Bavarian Forest, and Munich. They then analyzed the DNA of around 48,000 captured insects, with half of the DNA sequences belonging to previously unknown Diptera species. The researchers were surprised by the high proportion of undiscovered insect diversity in a supposedly well-studied country, particularly in families such as Chironomidae, Cecidomyiidae, Phoridae, and Sciaridae. The discovery of these new species is crucial in light of the global decline in insect populations, and the GBOL III: Dark Taxa project provides a vital scientific foundation for better understanding this decline in Germany.
