Mammal occurrence identified from metabarcoding of two leech species from Sabah, Malaysia

This dataset contains the results from a metabarcoding study of terrestrial leech blood meals to detect differences in the diets of two leech species, Haemadipsa picta and Haemadipsa sumatrana. Mammal taxa were identified using metabarcoding of 16s rRNA and comparisons of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) to a curated reference database from NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) GenBank. All leeches were collected from the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems project (SAFE; www.SAFEproject.net) as part of the NERC Human Modified tropical Forest Programme and the LOMBOK consortia (Land-use Options for Maintaining BiOdiversity & eKosystem functions). Leech samples were collected at different sites across a habitat gradient, to assess these invertebrates as molecular sampling tools for mammals. Individuals were pooled before amplicon sequencing with Illumina MiSeq 150-200bp x2. The resultant raw sequences were filtered and clustered at 97%, curated and then assigned to the reference database using BLAST and MEGAN programmes. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/3affed0d-fe6f-4916-89e3-e672639191e5