Using a forensic science approach to minimize environmental contamination and to identify microfibres in marine sediments.

There is growing evidence of extensive pollution of the environment by microplastic, with microfibres representing a large proportion of the microplastics seen in marine sediments. Since microfibres are ubiquitous in the environment, present in the laboratory air and water, evaluating microplastic pollution is difficult. Incidental contamination is highly likely unless strict control measures are employed.

Environmental metabarcoding reveals heterogeneous drivers of microbial eukaryote diversity in contrasting estuarine ecosystems.

Assessing how natural environmental drivers affect biodiversity underpins our understanding of the relationships between complex biotic and ecological factors in natural ecosystems. Of all ecosystems, anthropogenically important estuaries represent a 'melting pot' of environmental stressors, typified by extreme salinity variations and associated biological complexity. Although existing models attempt to predict macroorganismal diversity over estuarine salinity gradients, attempts to model microbial biodiversity are limited for eukaryotes.

Second-generation environmental sequencing unmasks marine metazoan biodiversity.

Biodiversity is of crucial importance for ecosystem functioning, sustainability and resilience, but the magnitude and organization of marine diversity at a range of spatial and taxonomic scales are undefined. In this paper, we use second-generation sequencing to unmask putatively diverse marine metazoan biodiversity in a Scottish temperate benthic ecosystem. We show that remarkable differences in diversity occurred at microgeographical scales and refute currently accepted ecological and taxonomic paradigms of meiofaunal identity, rank abundance and concomitant understanding of trophic dynamics.