*5.8. Towards Standardisation of Methods*

Although each step of the pollen metabarcoding process has a range of different approaches, only certain elements of the entire pollen metabarcoding workflow have been reviewed [132,143,146], leaving a large proportion of the study design to the authors' discretion. Without a standardisation of approaches, comparison of results across multiple studies must be interpreted with caution. Until each stage has been critically reviewed and a robust, standardised approach is established, we encourage researchers to carefully assess the considerations outlined in Table 1 for guidance prior to conducting a pollen metabarcoding study. Further, we call upon authors to be transparent in reporting every aspect of their molecular methods to ensure studies are reproducible, utilising supporting information where word limits are restricting.
