Abstract
Zooplankton communities are useful bioindicators that can provide information on the changes occurring in marine ecosystems. Therefore, investigation of zooplankton communities in marine and coastal national parks is essential. However, the surveys of zooplankton communities using morphological identification require considerable time and labor. Metabarcoding is a practical alternative that can detect various taxa simultaneously. In this study, metabarcoding was newly applied along with the traditional morphological identification to establish a method for zooplankton community survey in the Marine and Coastal National Park areas of Korea. By comparing the results of these two identification methods, the strengths and limitations of metabarcoding were verified with the zooplankton communities appearing in these areas. The sensitive detection capability of metabarcoding enabled the identification of potential bioindicator taxa associated with external factors (e.g., water temperature, salinity, topography, and chlorophyll a concentration) in these national parks. We propose the use of metabarcoding for efficient surveys of mesozooplankton communities in the Marine and Coastal National Parks to establish monitoring of bioindicator taxa. It is also necessary to continuously search for taxa with high research value in these national parks using metabarcoding. Establishing an ongoing monitoring system that employs this approach can provide an effective tool for managing marine ecosystems in the Marine and Coastal National Parks.
Highlights
Marine ecosystems are changing as a result of global climate change and industrialization in coastal areas
Consistent with the results of previous studies comparing the efficiency of morphological identification and metabarcoding, our results demonstrated that metabarcoding was able to detect much more zooplankton taxa than morphological identification
Consistent with the results of previous studies, we found that the biodiversity and taxonomic composition of mesozooplankton communities were different between the morphological identification and metabarcoding methods
Summary
Marine ecosystems are changing as a result of global climate change and industrialization in coastal areas. Bioindicators respond by changing their morphological or cellular structure, metabolic processes, behaviors, and communities [1,2,3]. Due to these characteristics, studying bioindicators that can confirm and monitor the changes in the marine ecosystem is becoming important worldwide [4,5]. Zooplankton represent the primary and secondary consumers in the aquatic food chain and are some of the most abundant and ubiquitous taxa in aquatic ecosystems [6,7,8]. The spatial and temporal distribution of zooplankton communities fluctuate in response to environmental changes in Diversity 2020, 12, 233; doi:10.3390/d12060233 www.mdpi.com/journal/diversity
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
