AI Article Synopsis

  • Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding shows promise as a method for assessing aquatic biodiversity, particularly fish community structures.
  • High-performance universal primers and extensive water sampling at 47 locations successfully identified 128 fish species, with a significant overlap of 62.5% with data from long-term visual censuses.
  • This innovative approach also uncovered additional fish species not recorded by visual methods, indicating its potential as a standard tool for marine biodiversity research.

Article Abstract

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has emerged as a potentially powerful tool to assess aquatic community structures. However, the method has hitherto lacked field tests that evaluate its effectiveness and practical properties as a biodiversity monitoring tool. Here, we evaluated the ability of eDNA metabarcoding to reveal fish community structures in species-rich coastal waters. High-performance fish-universal primers and systematic spatial water sampling at 47 stations covering ~11 km revealed the fish community structure at a species resolution. The eDNA metabarcoding based on a 6-h collection of water samples detected 128 fish species, of which 62.5% (40 species) were also observed by underwater visual censuses conducted over a 14-year period. This method also detected other local fishes (≥23 species) that were not observed by the visual censuses. These eDNA metabarcoding features will enhance marine ecosystem-related research, and the method will potentially become a standard tool for surveying fish communities.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227697PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep40368DOI Listing

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