DNA metabarcoding and microscopic analyses of sea turtles biofilms: Complementary to understand turtle behavior.

ABSTRACT: Sea turtles are distributed in tropical and subtropical seas worldwide. They play several ecological roles and are considered important indicators of the health of marine ecosystems. Studying epibiotic diatoms living on turtle shells suggestively has great potential in the study of turtle behavior because diatoms are always there. However, diatom identification at the species level is time consuming, requires well-trained specialists, and there is a high probability of finding new taxa growing on turtle shells, which makes identification tricky. An alternative approach based on DNA barcoding and high throughput sequencing (HTS), metabarcoding, has been developed in recent years to identify species at the community level by using a DNA reference library. The suitabilities of morphological a

SUBMITTER: Rivera SF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5901997 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature