Starting a DNA barcode reference library for shallow water polychaetes from the southern European Atlantic coast

Abstract

Annelid polychaetes have been seldom the focus of dedicated DNA barcoding studies, despite their ecological relevance and often dominance, particularly in soft-bottom estuarine and coastal marine ecosystems. Here, we report the first assessment of the performance of DNA barcodes in the discrimination of shallow water polychaete species from the southern European Atlantic coast, focusing on specimens collected in estuaries and coastal ecosystems of Portugal. We analysed cytochrome oxidase I DNA barcodes (COI-5P) from 164 specimens, which were assigned to 51 morphospecies. To our data set from Portugal, we added available published sequences selected from the same species, genus or family, to inspect for taxonomic congruence among studies and collection location. The final data set comprised 290 specimens and 79 morphospecies, which generated 99 Barcode Index Numbers (BINs) within Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD). Among these, 22 BINs were singletons, 47 other BINs were concordant, confirming the initial identification based on morphological characters, and 30 were discordant, most of which consisted on multiple BINs found for the same morphospecies. Some of the most prominent cases in the latter category include Hediste diversicolor (O.F. Müller, 1776) (7), Eulalia viridis (Linnaeus, 1767) (2) and Owenia fusiformis (delle Chiaje, 1844) (5), all of them reported from Portugal and frequently used in ecological studies as environmental quality indicators. Our results for these species showed discordance between molecular lineages and morphospecies, or added additional relatively divergent lineages. The potential inaccuracies in environmental assessments, where underpinning polychaete species diversity is poorly resolved or clarified, demand additional and extensive investigation of the DNA barcode diversity in this group, in parallel with alpha taxonomy efforts.

Early detection of invasive species in marine ecosystems using high-throughput sequencing: technical challenges and possible solutions

“…The results here suggest that biased amplification occurs even in replicates prepared using the exactly same communities and protocols. Data are derived from Zhan et al (2014a) and Sun et al (2015) Fortunately, efforts have been made to construct reference libraries (e.g., Lobo et al 2015;Knebelsberger et al 2014;Zhou et al 2011). However, broad collaborations are largely required to develop community-level reference libraries as different research groups have their own taxa of interest.…”

Polychaetes of Greece: an updated and annotated checklist

“…Lobo et al (2016) show that specimens from Portugal and Italy genetically diverge, indicating potentially more than one cryptic species in Europe (pending further corroboration through analysis of more specimens). One of the sibling species of Platynereis dumerilii occurring near CO 2 vents in Ischia, Italy, was recently shown to correspond to Platynereis massiliensis (Moquin-Tandon, 1869) (Valvassori et al 2015).…”

“…At least three putative cryptic species exist, one each in the Arctic and West Atlantic (Carr et al 2011) and another in Portugal (Lobo et al 2016). …”

“…Multiple genetic lineages exist in Europe (Nygren 2014, Lobo et al 2016) which could correspond to cryptic species. Vasileiadou et al (2016) found genetically highly isolated populations with unique haplotypes in Greek lagoons.…”

The joint effect of tidal barrier construction and freshwater releases on the macrobenthos community in the northern Yellow River Delta (China)

“…These species are typically widespread in brackish water and seawater areas (Lobo et al, 2016). They tend to emerge from burrows and swim to the surface of the water during their reproductive period (Sun and Yang, 2004).…”