Biodiversity assessment of tropical shelf eukaryotic communities via pelagic eDNA metabarcoding.

ABSTRACT: Our understanding of marine communities and their functions in an ecosystem relies on the ability to detect and monitor species distributions and abundances. Currently, the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is increasingly being applied for the rapid assessment and monitoring of aquatic species. Most eDNA metabarcoding studies have either focussed on the simultaneous identification of a few specific taxa/groups or have been limited in geographical scope. Here, we employed eDNA metabarcoding to compare beta diversity patterns of complex pelagic marine communities in tropical coastal shelf habitats spanning the whole Caribbean Sea. We screened 68 water samples using a universal eukaryotic COI barcode region and detected highly diverse communities, which varied significantly among

SUBMITTER: Bakker J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6953649 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature