Overcoming life stage-centric biases illuminates arthropod diversity, systematics and biology

Synthetic studies of arthropod systematics and biodiversity are hindered by overreliance on 'preferred' semaphoronts, those life stages (typically adult males) that provide the most taxonomically distinctive characters. However, modern sequence-based methods for inventory have no such limitations and permit incorporation of any and all representatives of a species. Here, we briefly review the growth and potential of these approaches to faunistic and systematic studies and share results from our own recent work that illustrate the value that other morphs, immature stages and females added to these studies. Preferences for morphologically identifiable semaphoronts in arthropod surveys and systematic studies leave many species uncounted and important life stages undocumented. DNA-based metabarcoding surveys should strive to sample and incorporate diverse semaphoronts, with great downstream benefits for arthropod systematics and conservation. Immature specimens accounted for more than one-fourth of all the species recovered in a metabarcoding survey of leaf litter arthropods in southern Appalachia. image