Species detections in environmental DNA using metabarcoding: a useful tool in estuaries monitoring
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science, Biodiversity, Genetics, Marine Biology, Molecular Biology
- Keywords
- Estuaries, NGS, Metabarcoding, Exotics, Invasive species, Aquaculture
- Copyright
- © 2015 Mártinez-Marqués et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Species detections in environmental DNA using metabarcoding: a useful tool in estuaries monitoring. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1562v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1562v1
Abstract
Estuaries are amongst the most productive habitats in Earth, producing more organic materia than forests, meadows or agricultural lands. In addition, estuaries exhibit high, and precious, biodiversity levels. In this study an environmental DNA analysis of the two most important estuaries in Asturias (Cantabrian Coast, north Iberia) in terms of food production (Ría del Eo and Ría de Villaviciosa) was carried out. The objective was to monitor aquatic biodiversity and also to detect alien species that can be associated with anthropogenic activities (e.g.: aquaculture). To achieve these objectives, a metabarcoding methodology based in NGS (next generation sequencing) and the mitochondrial COI gene as a DNA Barcode was used. Results showed that this methodology was useful to detect the presence of three different non-native genera (Crepidula, Lymnaea, Macrobrachium) that are probably parasitating species cultured in these estuaries. It is true that Metabarcoding has still unsolved problems such as the lack of 100% universal primers and paucity of referenced sequences for some taxonomic groups in the databases. However, it represents already a powerful tool to manage the resources of these important ecosystems and to guarantee their long-term sustainailibity.
Author Comment
This is an abstract which has been accepted for the "MARES" Conference, and it is part of the Mares Conference on Marine Ecosystems Health and Conservation 2016 PeerJ Collection.