eDNA metabarcoding warms up a hotspot of marine biodiversity: revealing underrepresented taxa in visual surveys and historical records from the Gulf of California

摘要: Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is revolutionizing biodiversity monitoring, but comparisons against traditional data rarely include long-term historical inventories. We targeted eukaryotes by amplifying a fragment of the 18S gene from eDNA isolated from seawater samples at 20 sites in the Gulf of California (GC) and contrasted regional taxonomic diversity against 316 simultaneous visual surveys and a historical database with over 5k species. From 61k Amplified Sequence Variants, we identified 850 eukaryotic families, of which half represent new compiled records, including 174 families of planktonic, benthic, and parasitic invertebrates. The 18S eDNA metabarcoding analysis revealed many overseen taxa, highlighting higher taxonomic ranks within micro-invertebrates, microscopic fungi, and other micro-eukaryotes from the supergroups Stramenopiles, Alveolata, and Rhizaria. The database combining …