Benthic invertebrates in Svalbard fjords-when metabarcoding does not outperform traditional biodiversity assessment.

ABSTRACT: To protect and restore ecosystems and biodiversity is one of the 10 challenges identified by the United Nations's Decade of the Ocean Science. In this study we used eDNA from sediments collected in two fjords of the Svalbard archipelago and compared the taxonomic composition with traditional methods through metabarcoding, targeting mitochondrial CO1, to survey benthos. Clustering of 21.6 mill sequence reads with a d value of 13 in swarm, returned about 25 K OTU reads. An identification search with the BOLD database returned 12,000 taxonomy annotated sequences spanning a similarity range of 50% to 100%. Using an acceptance filter of minimum 90% similarity to the CO1 reference sequence, we found that 74% of the ca 100 taxon identified sequence reads were Polychaeta and 22% Nematoda. R

SUBMITTER: Willassen E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9676020 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature