Zooplankton biodiversity assessment is a crucial element in monitoring marine ecosystem processes and community responses to environmental alterations. In order to evaluate the suitability of metabarcoding for zooplankton biodiversity assessment and biomonitoring as a fast and more cost-effective method, seasonal zooplankton sampling was carried out in the Venice Lagoon and the nearby coastal area (Northern Adriatic Sea). The molecular analysis showed higher taxa richness compared to the classical morphological method (224 vs. 88 taxa), discriminating better the meroplanktonic component, morphologically identified only up to order level. Both methods revealed a similar spatio-temporal distribution pattern and the sequence abundances and individual counts were significantly correlated for various taxonomic groups. These results indicate that DNA metabarcoding is an efficient tool for biodiversity assessments in ecosystems with high spatial and temporal variability, where high sampling effort is required as well as fast alert systems for non-native species (NIS).

浮游生物的生物多样性评估是监测海洋生态系统过程和社区对环境变化的反应的关键要素。为了评估元条形码在浮游生物多样性评估和生物监测中的适用性，作为一种快速且更具成本效益的方法，在威尼斯泻湖和附近沿海地区（北亚得里亚海）进行了季节性浮游动物采样。分子分析显示，与传统形态学方法相比，分类单元具有更高的丰富度（224对88个分类单元），可以更好地区分浮游生物成分，在形态学上只能鉴定到有序水平。两种方法均显示出相似的时空分布模式，并且各个分类组的序列丰度和个体计数均显着相关。