Early detection of alien arthropod species in Norway

The initial goal of the project is to detect new alien species in early establishment phase in Norwegian nature. Insects and other arthropods have been sampled from urban and suburban sites in southeast-Norway. The trap collects flying insects passively in a bottle with 96% ethanol and is emptied once every four weeks, from May to September. All arthropods in the samples are identified by DNA-metabarcoding. DNA is extracted from the samples using a soft lysis method, which extracts DNA from the specimens without destroying them. The COI-region is then amplified from the extracted DNA and sequenced. The sequences are then filtered and quality checked and identified through matching with an in-house database of reference sequences.

As of 2023, the geographic scope is limited to the wider Oslo bay area.