Abstract
Marine ecosystems in urban coastal areas are exposed to many risks due to human activity. Thus, long-term and continuous monitoring of zooplankton diversity is necessary. High-throughput DNA metabarcoding has gained recognition as an efficient and highly sensitive approach to accurately describing the species diversity of marine zooplankton assemblages. In this study, we collected 30 zooplankton samples at about 2-week intervals for 1 year. Zooplankton diversity showing a typical four season pattern. Of the “total” and “common” zooplankton, we assigned 267 and 64 taxa. The cluster structure and seasonal diversity pattern were rough when only the “common” zooplankton was used. Our study examined how to maximize the benefits of metabarcoding for monitoring zooplankton diversity in urban coastal areas. The results suggest that to take full advantage of metabarcoding when monitoring a zooplankton community, it is necessary to carefully investigate potential ecosystem threats (non-indigenous species) through sufficient curation rather than disregarding low-abundance operational taxonomic units.
Highlights
Marine ecosystems in urban coastal areas are exposed to many risks due to human activity
Our study investigated how to maximize the advantages of metabarcoding for monitoring of zooplankton community structure and diversity in urban coastal regions like the entrance of Busan Port, Korea
The zooplankton community showed a typical four-season pattern and the species representing each seasonal group were generally consistent with previous studies
Summary
Marine ecosystems in urban coastal areas are exposed to many risks due to human activity. Metabarcoding analysis has high-throughput sequencing sensitivity and can discriminate cryptic species and rare species with low abundances such as early invaders that would be missed in traditional classification[12,13] It can be useful when it is difficult to identify the morphological classification key such as physically damaged samples or the larval stage of invertebrates, which can decrease the classification’s resolution. Metabarcoding is more practical and cost-effective than the traditional method which requires many experts’ labor and time to study the wide diversity of marine zooplankton[3,4,9,14,15,16]. Continuous monitoring of the zooplankton community and diversity in the region will provide useful data in responding to human activities and ecosystem changes and crises. Potential and persistent environmental pollution from the increase in human activities in this area can cause marine ecosystem instability[21]
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