Fig. 2.

Gel image of PCR products amplified with the three customised multiplex PCR assays and visualised with the QIAxcel system. MPI (left side) comprises group/family-specific primers for seven taxa: beetles/thrips, spiders, aphids, earthworms, springtails, dipterans, and lacewings. MPII spiders (upper right side) covers two spider families, i.e. lycosids and linyphiids, as well as the genus Pachygnatha. MPII beetles/thrips (lower right side) addresses six taxa: the carabid genera Poecilus, Bembidion, Pterostichus, and Harpalus, the ladybeetle Coccinella septempunctata as well as thrips (Frankliniella, Limothrips). The shortest and longest fragments within each lane represent the two alignment markers (AM; 15 and 3000 bp) as indicated in the left panel. For amplicon lengths see Fig. 1 and Table 3. Mixes of DNA templates of targets; approximately 1000 ds copies each in PCR