Rapid Assessment Surveys are routinely used to document biodiversity and is particularly important for the identification of non-indigenous species. However, the methods associated with these surveys have traditionally relied solely on morphological data, which for broad scale surveys, can be time consuming and expensive. In this study we incorporated DNA barcoding into a recent RAS of native and non-indigenous fauna associated with floating dock communities at several marinas in the New England region of the United States. We focused specifically on the polychaetes – a notoriously problematic group to barcode. Results from the rapid assessment survey, carried out over three days, yielded 48 polychaete specimens in total, representing 11 distinct species and six families. Three different primer pairs were used to amplify a 550–710 bp fragment of the CO1 gene for each of the 11 morphologically identified species. CO1 amplification was successful for all species and each morphologically identified species was molecularly confirmed using the GenBank database (identity scores ranged from 92 to 100%). Phylogenetic analysis along with low intraspecific genetic distance estimates (0.000–0.019) strongly supported the similarity indices. Four of the 11 species identified are part of species complexes in other parts of the world and are assigned here as pseudo-cosmpolitan while the remaining seven species are likely cryptogenic. This is the first DNA barcoding study on polychaetes from floating dock communities on the New England coast which adds to a growing number of studies that are incorporating molecular barcoding into rapid assessment surveys.

快速评估调查通常用于记录生物多样性，对于识别非本地物种特别重要。但是，传统上，与这些调查相关的方法仅依赖形态数据，对于大规模调查而言，这可能既耗时又昂贵。在这项研究中，我们将DNA条形码纳入了与美国新英格兰地区多个码头的浮船坞社区相关的本地和非本地动物的最新RAS中。我们专门针对多毛绒-条形码的一个有问题的小组。快速评估调查的结果进行了三天，总共得出48个多毛cha标本，代表11个不同的物种和6个科。使用三种不同的引物对来扩增11种形态鉴定物种中CO1基因的550-710 bp片段。CO1扩增对所有物种均成功，并且使用GenBank数据库对每个形态鉴定的物种进行了分子确认（同一性评分范围为92％至100％）。系统发育分析以及较低的种内遗传距离估计值（0.000-0.019）强烈支持相似性指数。在确定的11种物种中，有4种是世界其他地区物种复合体的一部分，在这里被指定为伪世界主义者，而其余7种可能是隐源性的。