A tea bag is made of various leaves that would paint a picture of thousand of interactions with insects if only it could talk. Bees have landed on them, spiders tethered webs to them, and caterpillars chewed on them and built their cocoons. Many of these interactions between plants and animals were not recorded and doing so would take a lot of time and effort.
Ecological geneticist Henrik Krehenwinkel from the University of Trier said that these interactions are very specific and cryptic and that only a little information is known simply because no one has studied them before. But their team hopes to change that and decided to research tea bags.
Bug in A Teacup: DNA of Over 1,200 Insects Found in Different Herbs and Tea
Krehenwinkel, the lead researcher of the study, and his team discovered a new way of uncovering some of the interactions between plants and animals. They tested the dried and packaged tea leaves they bought from a grocery store and applied a method called environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis.
In their study titled "The Bug in a Teacup-Monitoring Arthropod-Plant Associations With Environmental Dna From Dried Plant Material," published in Biology Letters, the team reported that they found more than 1,200 different arthropod species in chamomile, mint, parsley, and tea. The eDNA method can be used to monitor endangered insect species and track the spread of crop pests.
Krehenwinkel said that out of the commercially available herbs and tea they analyzed using the eDNA analysis, they found DNA of up to 400 different types of insects in a single tea bag.
They examined herbs and teas for their study because these commercial products are made from crushed and dried leaves, unlike heavily processed coffee, which probably has little DNA left.
They bought multiple versions of the same product from different brands to ensure each tea had a range of origins and maximize the number of insect species they could find. Their analysis showed that the majority of the DNA in tea leaves is from the tea plant itself, but there is a tiny fraction of insect DNA, which means that the tea is not dripping with pesticides.
How eDNA Analysis Works
According to Phys.org, creatures leave behind eDNA in natural environments when they chew or crawl on surfaces. They could leave DNA behind in saliva as they chew or defecate. The method was developed by researchers for several years, wherein they started by identifying parts of DNA strands that are commonly found in many organisms, like arthropods.
In the study, they found bug eDNA from plant DNA by boiling the herbs and tea they bought from the grocery store. Then, they studied the eDNA to identify its source. The team suggests that their work expands the scope of eDNA as it sheds light on new ways of how it could be used to monitor certain ecosystems that may be useful today as global warming continue to worsen.
Krehenwinkel noted that it is possible to collect eDNA almost everywhere in the environment, from the water, and soil to plants. Observation and surveillance of organisms have opened new doors for biomonitoring in recent years.
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