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

• DOI: 10.1038/srep40368
• Publication Date: 2017-01-12T10:37:52Z
• Authors: Satoshi Yamamoto; Reiji Masuda; Yukuto Sato; Tetsuya Sado; Hitoshi Araki; Michio Kondoh; Toshifumi Minamoto; Masaki Miya
• Keywords: Environmental DNA; Diversity of fish; Marine fish

Abstract Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has emerged as a potentially powerful tool to assess aquatic community structures. However, the method hitherto lacked field tests that evaluate its effectiveness and practical properties biodiversity monitoring tool. Here, we evaluated ability of eDNA reveal fish structures in species-rich coastal waters. High-performance fish-universal primers systematic spatial water sampling at 47 stations covering ~11 km 2 revealed structure species resolution. The based on 6-h collection samples detected 128 species, which 62.5% (40 species) were also observed by underwater visual censuses conducted over 14-year period. This other local fishes (≥23 not censuses. These features will enhance marine ecosystem-related research, become standard for surveying communities.