Biodiversity and Community Structure of Mesozooplankton in the Marine and Coastal National Park Areas of Korea

Abstract

Zooplankton communities are useful bioindicators that can provide information on the changes occurring in marine ecosystems. Therefore, investigation of zooplankton communities in marine and coastal national parks is essential. However, the surveys of zooplankton communities using morphological identification require considerable time and labor. Metabarcoding is a practical alternative that can detect various taxa simultaneously. In this study, metabarcoding was newly applied along with the traditional morphological identification to establish a method for zooplankton community survey in the Marine and Coastal National Park areas of Korea. By comparing the results of these two identification methods, the strengths and limitations of metabarcoding were verified with the zooplankton communities appearing in these areas. The sensitive detection capability of metabarcoding enabled the identification of potential bioindicator taxa associated with external factors (e.g., water temperature, salinity, topography, and chlorophyll a concentration) in these national parks. We propose the use of metabarcoding for efficient surveys of mesozooplankton communities in the Marine and Coastal National Parks to establish monitoring of bioindicator taxa. It is also necessary to continuously search for taxa with high research value in these national parks using metabarcoding. Establishing an ongoing monitoring system that employs this approach can provide an effective tool for managing marine ecosystems in the Marine and Coastal National Parks.

Global mesozooplankton communities show lower connectivity in deep oceanic layers

“…Additionally, exploring the deep ocean has added challenges related to the sampling at high depths. To date, most studies on mesozooplankton have been carried out at local (Domínguez et al, 2017;Ershova & Kosobokova, 2019;Kim, Lee, Lee, Oh, & Kim, 2020;Pearman & Irigoien, 2015) or regional (Carlotti et al, 2018;Cheng et al, 2022;Feliú, Pagano, Hidalgo, & Carlotti, 2020;Landry, Hood, & Davies, 2020;Siokou et al, 2019) scales, and only some studies covered large oceanic transects (Bode et al, 2018;Hirai et al, 2020;Vereshchaka, Abyzova, Lunina, & Musaeva, 2017) or global oceanic areas (Fernández de Puelles et al, 2019;Soviadan et al, 2022). Another limitation lies on the taxonomic identification of mesozooplankton being a time-consuming task that greatly depends on often lacking taxonomic expertise and information of the targeted organisms (Hirai & Tsuda, 2015).…”

Revealing zooplankton diversity in the midnight zone

“…This molecular technique utilizes HTS to identify several taxa from a single sample by comparing the DNA of one or more specific genes, such as mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COI) (Leray et al, 2013) and nuclear 18S ribosomal RNA (18S) (Amaral-Zettler et al, 2009), to a reference database of known species and sequences (Taberlet et al, 2012). The application of this technique to zooplankton communities has demonstrated its capacity to identify small, immature, and cryptic specimens, allowing for the detection of more species or genera than traditional taxonomy (Lindeque et al, 2013;Kim et al, 2020). Moreover, it has allowed the identification of vertical distribution gradients and changes in the zooplankton structure associated with oceanographic variability in shallow pelagic environments (Lindeque et al, 2013;De Vargas et al, 2015).…”

Seasonal Diversity of Microeukaryotes in the Han River, Korea Through 18S rRNA Gene Metabarcoding

“…For microeukaryotes, 18S rRNA gene sequences have been used in various studies to investigate different groups, including diatoms, 25 arthropods, 26 and fungi. 27 These studies have shown the possibility for high-throughput analysis based on 18S rRNA gene sequences to assess microeukaryote biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems.…”

“…22,23 Moreover, metabarcoding analysis has provided compositional data from samples containing organisms that are challenging to identify because of their smaller sizes or owing to the use of classical identification methods. 24 For microeukaryotes, 18S rRNA gene sequences have been used in various studies to investigate different groups, including diatoms, 25 arthropods, 26 and fungi. 27 These studies have shown the possibility for high-throughput analysis based on 18S rRNA gene sequences to assess microeukaryote biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems.…”