Effect of fuchsin fixation of pollen on DNA barcode recovery.

Pollen grains attached to insects are a valuable source of ecological information which can be used to reconstruct visitation networks. Morphological pollen identification relies on light microscopy with pollen usually stained and mounted in fuchsin jelly, which is also used to remove pollen from the bodies of insects. Pollen embedded in fuchsin jelly could potentially be used for DNA barcoding and metabarcoding (large-scale taxonomic identification of complex mixed samples) and thus provide additional information for pollination networks.