How many replicates to accurately estimate fish biodiversity using environmental DNA on coral reefs?

Quantifying fish species diversity in rich tropical marine environments remains challenging. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is a promising tool to face this challenge through the filtering, amplification, and sequencing of DNA traces from water samples. However, because eDNA concentration is low in marine environments, the reliability of eDNA to detect species diversity can be limited.

Use of environmental DNA in assessment of fish functional and phylogenetic diversity.

Assessing the impact of global changes and protection effectiveness is a key step in monitoring marine fishes. Most traditional census methods are demanding or destructive. Nondisturbing and nonlethal approaches based on video and environmental DNA are alternatives to underwater visual census or fishing.

First records and new information on the associations of echinoderms with other phyla in the rocky reefs of northern Chocó, Colombian Pacific.

Rocky reefs of the northern Colombian Pacific (Chocó) are diverse ecosystems that are poorly studied. Echinoderms are one of the principal groups in these ecosystems with associations to different species, including benthic organisms in which they live and other species that use them as hosts. These relationships include fishes, sponges, seaweeds, cnidarians, polychaetes, bryozoans, crustaceans, mollusks, and other echinoderms.

() sp. nov. (Holothuriida, Holothuriidae), a new sea cucumber from the Eastern Pacific Ocean revealed by morphology and DNA barcoding.

Holothuria (Mertensiothuria) viridiaurantia is described based on specimens from rocky reefs of northern Chocó in the Colombian Pacific Ocean; however, it also occurs along the Eastern Pacific Ocean from Mexico and Panama. Although specimens from Mexico and Panama were previously identified as Holothuria (Mertensiothuria) hilla Lesson, 1830 the new species is easily distinguished morphologically and via mtDNA. In terms of morphology, the species can be identified by its olive-green background and white-orange papillae and tentacles, larger tentacles with deep indentations and also by larger buttons on the dorsal and ventral body wall, papillae and tube feet; large, thick and rough tentacle rods, and the absence of ossicles in the longitudinal muscles.

Molecular systematics of the genus Holothuria in the Mediterranean and Northeastern Atlantic and a molecular clock for the diversification of the Holothuriidae (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea).

This work investigates the systematics of the genus Holothuria in the Mediterranean Sea and Northeastern Atlantic in the light of a wider molecular phylogenetic hypothesis of Holothuriidae, and it also provides a time-scale for the family diversification using mitochondrial markers and the molecular clock hypothesis. The subgenera Holothuria and Roweothuria are retrieved as paraphyletic. At least four separate lineages, with quite different time frameworks were identified.

[Taxonomic list of the asteroids (Echinodermata: Asteroidea) from the shelf and superior slope from the Colombian Caribbean].

Between 1998 and 2001 we surveyed the benthic macrofauna of the continental shelf and its upper slope in the Colombian Caribbean. The INVEMAR-MACROFAUNA I-II expeditions used a "semi-ballon" net were for 10 minute bottom drags from Punta Gallinas (Guajira) to Arboletes (Antioquia). These covered seven ecological sectors from the Colombian Caribbean: Guajira (GUA), Palomino (PAL), Tayrona (TAY), Magdalena (MAG), Archipiélagos Coralinos (ARCO), Morrosquillo (MOR), and Darié (DAR).