Environmental DNA metabarcoding reveals local fish communities in a species-rich coastal sea

Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2017 papers

Abstract

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has emerged as a potentially powerful tool to assess aquatic community structures. However, the method has hitherto lacked field tests that evaluate its effectiveness and practical properties as a biodiversity monitoring tool. Here, we evaluated the ability of eDNA metabarcoding to reveal fish community structures in species-rich coastal waters. High-performance fish-universal primers and systematic spatial water sampling at 47 stations covering ~11 km2 revealed the fish community structure at a species resolution. The eDNA metabarcoding based on a 6-h collection of water samples detected 128 fish species, of which 62.5% (40 species) were also observed by underwater visual censuses conducted over a 14-year period. This method also detected other local fishes (≥23 species) that were not observed by the visual censuses. These eDNA metabarcoding features will enhance marine ecosystem-related research, and the method will potentially become a standard tool for surveying fish communities.

Related Papers

• → Biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality(2007)1,350 cited
• → Biodiversity regulates ecosystem predictability(1997)728 cited
• → Environmental DNA reveals that rivers are conveyer belts of biodiversity information(2016)637 cited
• → Strength of species interactions determines biodiversity and stability in microbial communities(2020)627 cited
• → Application of eDNA Metabarcoding for Detecting Anura on a Tropical Island(2021)15 cited