Extending deep-sea benthic biodiversity inventories with environmental DNA metabarcoding

Oosthuizen, Delene; Seymour, Mathew; Atkinson, Lara J.; Heyden, Sophie von der

doi:10.1007/s00227-023-04205-4

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 62 publications

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“…In addition, two phyla of Gastrotricha and Hemichordata were exclusively found at two stations (P30 and P112) characterized by the shallowest water depth, suggesting their distribution patterns are likely influenced by depth gradients. These results indicated that the alpha diversity declines with the increasing water depth in the studied TAB system, supporting previous findings that depth gradients restricted the distributions of various metazoan taxa in deep seafloor (Brandt et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2022;Oosthuizen et al, 2023).…”

Section: The Characteristics Of Diversity and Taxa Distribution In A ...supporting

confidence: 90%

Metazoan diversity and community assemblages in sediments across a Western Pacific Trench-Arc-Basin system: insights from eDNA metabarcoding

Mo,

Li,

Mou

et al. 2024

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Trench-arc-basin (TAB) systems are widely distributed in the deep sea, yet our understanding of their biodiversity patterns and community assemblages remains limited. In this study, we collected sediment samples from 22 stations across a Western Pacific TAB system and identified 85 families of marine benthos from 15 phyla by using eDNA metabarcoding with the 18S rRNA gene V4 region. Nematodes were the most dominant metazoan taxa followed by echinoderms, arthropods, and annelids. The highest biodiversity and species specificity were observed at stations located near seamounts. The community assemblages were highly heterogeneous in this TAB system, likely induced by the large geographic barriers and the high habitat heterogeneity. Furthermore, the total organic carbon content and median grain size of the sediment drive the overall community composition, and the water depth exerts a significant influence on species richness and abundance. Our results provide insight into benthos diversity and distribution across a TAB system and data for further comparisons and modeling studies.

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Section: The Characteristics Of Diversity and Taxa Distribution In A ...supporting

confidence: 90%

Metazoan diversity and community assemblages in sediments across a Western Pacific Trench-Arc-Basin system: insights from eDNA metabarcoding

Mo,

Li,

Mou

et al. 2024

Front. Mar. Sci.

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North Atlantic deep-sea benthic biodiversity unveiled through sponge natural sampler DNA

Gallego,

Arias,

Corral-Lou

et al. 2024

Commun Biol

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The deep-sea remains the biggest challenge to biodiversity exploration, and anthropogenic disturbances extend well into this realm, calling for urgent management strategies. One of the most diverse, productive, and vulnerable ecosystems in the deep sea are sponge grounds. Currently, environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is revolutionising the field of biodiversity monitoring, yet complex deep-sea benthic ecosystems remain challenging to assess even with these novel technologies. Here, we evaluate the effectiveness of whole-community metabarcoding to characterise metazoan diversity in sponge grounds across the North Atlantic by leveraging the natural eDNA sampling properties of deep-sea sponges themselves. We sampled 97 sponge tissues from four species across four North-Atlantic biogeographic regions in the deep sea and screened them using the universal COI barcode region. We recovered unprecedented levels of taxonomic diversity per unit effort, especially across the phyla Chordata, Cnidaria, Echinodermata and Porifera, with at least 406 metazoan species found in our study area. These assemblages identify strong spatial patterns in relation to both latitude and depth, and detect emblematic species currently employed as indicators for these vulnerable habitats. The remarkable performance of this approach in different species of sponges, in different biogeographic regions and across the whole animal kingdom, illustrates the vast potential of natural samplers as high-resolution biomonitoring solutions for highly diverse and vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems.

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Detecting kelp-forest associated metazoan biodiversity with eDNA metabarcoding

Rossouw,

Landschoff,

Ndhlovu

et al. 2024

npj biodivers

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Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is a promising tool for monitoring marine biodiversity, but remains underutilised in Africa. In this study, we evaluated the ability of aquatic eDNA metabarcoding as a tool for detecting biodiversity associated with a South African kelp forest, an ecosystem that harbours high diversity of species, many of which are endemic, but are also sensitive to changing environmental conditions and anthropogenic pressures. Using fine-scale spatial (1 m and 8 m) and temporal (every four hours for 24 h) sampling of aquatic environmental DNA and targeting two gene regions (mtDNA COI and 12S rRNA), metabarcoding detected 880 OTUs representing 75 families in the broader metazoan community with 44 OTUs representing 24 fish families. We show extensive variability in the eDNA signal across space and time and did not recover significant spatio-temporal structure in OTU richness and community assemblages. Metabarcoding detected a broad range of taxonomic groups, including arthropods, ascidians, cnidarians, echinoderms, ctenophores, molluscs, polychaetes, ichthyofauna and sponges, as well as Placozoa, previously not reported from South Africa. Fewer than 3% of OTUs could be identified to species level using available databases (COI = 19 OTUs, 12S = 11 OTUs). Our study emphasizes that kelp-forest associated biodiversity in South Africa is understudied, but that with careful consideration for sampling design in combination with increased barcoding efforts and the construction of regional databases, eDNA metabarcoding will become a powerful biomonitoring tool of kelp-forest associated biodiversity.

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Extending deep-sea benthic biodiversity inventories with environmental DNA metabarcoding

Cited by 4 publications

References 62 publications

Metazoan diversity and community assemblages in sediments across a Western Pacific Trench-Arc-Basin system: insights from eDNA metabarcoding

Metazoan diversity and community assemblages in sediments across a Western Pacific Trench-Arc-Basin system: insights from eDNA metabarcoding

North Atlantic deep-sea benthic biodiversity unveiled through sponge natural sampler DNA

Detecting kelp-forest associated metazoan biodiversity with eDNA metabarcoding

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