ABSTRACT
Biodiversity assessment plays a key role in understanding the biotic community of a particular habitat and framing management and conservation strategies for different species present in it. The traditional biodiversity assessment approaches are expensive, labour-intensive, and time consuming with a high error rate at species-level resolution, particularly at the earlier life stages. Huge efforts were undertaken in the last two decades to develop advanced and alternative tools for biodiversity monitoring using DNA-based methods. Integration of DNA barcoding coupled with high-throughput sequencing on next-generation sequencing platforms in biodiversity analysis has provided a greater identification capability at the genus and species level, which led to a sensitive assessment of biodiversity in a variety of ecosystems. This chapter discusses the use of DNA barcoding and metabarcoding as a potential (or complementary) tool for biodiversity monitoring.
