eDNA metabarcoding can take snapshots of coastal biodiversity

Carijoa (Joanne CC-BY-NC 4.0 (Int))

Citation

DiBattista, J. D., Fowler, A. M., Shalders, T. C., Williams, R. J., Wilkinson, S. (2024) Tree of life metabarcoding can serve as a biotic benchmark for shifting baselines in urbanized estuaries. Environmental Research https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2024.119454

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Prepared by Dax Kellie

Sheltered coastal and estuarine ecosystems are under considerable threat from human activity and urbanization. To help understand ongoing impacts, it is useful to catalogue the aquatic diversity in an area to compare against over time.

DiBattista and colleagues used Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding—also known as Tree-of-Life metabarcoding—to take a snapshot of species diversity and species richness in 4 distinct geomorphic habitat regions in Sydney Harbour using seawater samples.

The authors catalogued 1,427 unique taxa and 1,118 aquatic taxa overall from 16 eDNA metabarcoding assays, showing how this method can be used to “benchmark” an area’s biodiversity. They found each habitat zone in Sydney Harbour had distinct community compositions of flora and fauna, with bacteria (one of the most represented groups in the study but one of the least documented groups in data repositories) a useful environmental indicator captured via this method.