Freshwater diatom biomonitoring through benthic kick-net metabarcoding

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242143
• Publication Date: 2020-11-18T18:46:37Z
• Authors: Victoria Carley M...; Chloe Victoria Ro...; Teresita M. Porter; Mehrdad Hajibabaei
• Keywords: Periphyton; Bioindicator; Indicator species

Biomonitoring is an essential tool for assessing ecological conditions and informing management strategies. The application of DNA metabarcoding high throughput sequencing has improved data quantity resolution biomonitoring taxa such as macroinvertebrates, yet, there remains the need to optimise these methods other taxonomic groups. Diatoms have a longstanding history in freshwater bioindicators water quality status. However, multi-substrate periphyton collection, common diatom sampling practice, time-consuming thus costly terms labour. This study examined whether benthic kick-net technique used macroinvertebrate could be applied bulk-sample diatoms metabarcoding. To test this approach, we collected samples using both conventional microhabitat collections bulk-tissue methodologies parallel from replicated sites with different habitat status (good/fair). We found was no significant difference community assemblages between collection or site status, but communities depending on (P = 0.042). These results show coverage achieved through suitable applications. shift more robust approach capturing well macroinvertebrates single event potential significantly improve efficiency programmes that currently only use sample macroinvertebrates.