Resolving biology’s dark matter: species richness, spatiotemporal distribution, and community composition of a dark taxon

Abstract Background Zoology’s dark matter comprises hyperdiverse, poorly known taxa that are numerically dominant but largely unstudied, even in temperate regions where charismatic taxa are well understood. Dark taxa are everywhere, but high diversity, abundance, and small size have historically stymied their study. We demonstrate how entomological dark matter can be elucidated using high-throughput DNA barcoding (“megabarcoding”). We reveal the high abundance and diversity of scuttle flies (Diptera: Phoridae) in Sweden using 31,800 specimens from 37 sites across four seasonal periods. We investigate the number of scuttle fly species in Sweden and the environmental factors driving community changes across time and space. Results Swedish scuttle fly diversity is much higher than previously known, with 549 putative species detected, compared to 374 previously recorded species. Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities reveals that scuttle fly communities are highly structured by latitude and strongly driven by climatic factors. Large dissimilarities between sites and seasons are driven by turnover rather than nestedness. Climate change is predicted to significantly affect the 47% of species that show significant responses to mean annual temperature. Results were robust regardless of whether haplotype diversity or species-proxies were used as response variables. Additionally, species-level models of common taxa adequately predict overall species richness. Conclusions Understanding the bulk of the diversity around us is imperative during an era of biodiversity change. We show that dark insect taxa can be efficiently characterised and surveyed with megabarcoding. Undersampling of rare taxa and choice of operational taxonomic units do not alter the main ecological inferences, making it an opportune time to tackle zoology’s dark matter.