Genomic technologies continue to shed light on important ecological and evolutionary questions. Nonetheless, these new tools are applied disproportionately in a small fraction of global biodiversity, partly because of technical challenges to studying highly diverse taxa that occur in low abundances in an environment (e.g., marine and microbial communities). As a result, our understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes lags in many taxa. In a From the Cover manuscript in this issue of Molecular Ecology Resources, Galen, Borner, Williamson, Witt, and Perkins (2020) present a novel approach for characterizing diversity that combines metatranscriptomics with rigorous bioinformatic processing to dramatically improve detection and identification of diverse, low-abundance avian blood parasites. Their approach is an exciting application of available tools that increases our potential for a deeper understanding of diversity in other communities of low-abundance, highly diverse taxa.

中文翻译：

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有前途的寄生虫方案：元转录组学可改善对超多样性但低丰度群落的检测。

基因组技术继续阐明重要的生态和进化问题。尽管如此，这些新工具在全球生物多样性的一小部分中不成比例地被应用，部分原因是在研究在环境（例如海洋和微生物群落）中以低丰度发生的高度多样化的分类单元的技术挑战。结果，我们对生态和进化过程的理解在许多分类中都落后了。Galen，Borner，Williamson，Witt和Perkins（2020）在本期《分子生态资源》的“从封面开始”的手稿中，提出了一种表征多样性的新颖方法，该方法将元转录组学与严格的生物信息学处理相结合，从而显着改善了对多样性，低丰度禽血寄生虫。