Traditional methods for algal biodiversity monitoring are costly and time inefficient because they rely on high‐level taxonomic expertise to address species identity problems involving phenotypic plasticity and morphological convergence. These problems are exacerbated in regions such as the Gulf of Mexico, that has a limited history of phycological exploration, but that are economically important or threatened by numerous anthropogenic stressors. Given the high pace of disturbance to natural systems, there is a critical need for expedient and cost‐effective tools for the study of benthic algal communities. Here we document the use of environmental DNA metabarcoding, using the partial LSU rDNA and 23S rDNA plastid molecular markers, to elucidate littoral algal diversity in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. We assigned 73.7% of algal OTUs to genus and 59.6% to species ranks. Our current study detected molecular signals for 35 algal/protist species with no previous reports in the Gulf of Mexico, thus providing an important, molecular‐validated, baseline of species richness for this region. We also make several bioinformatic recommendations for the efficient use of high‐throughput sequence data to assess biological communities.

中文翻译：

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使用环境DNA元条形码技术评估墨西哥北部海湾沿岸藻类多样性

传统的藻类生物多样性监测方法成本高昂且时间效率低，因为它们依靠高级分类学专业知识来解决涉及表型可塑性和形态趋同的物种识别问题。这些问题在诸如墨西哥湾等具有有限的植物学探索历史的地区，但在经济上很重要或受到众多人为压力源威胁的地区，加剧了。鉴于对自然系统的高速干扰，迫切需要用于研究底栖藻类群落的便捷且具有成本效益的工具。在这里，我们记录了环境DNA metabarcoding的使用，使用部分LSU rDNA和23S rDNA质体分子标记物来阐明墨西哥北部海湾的沿海藻类多样性。我们将73.7％的藻类OTU分配给属，并将59。占物种排名的6％。我们当前的研究检测到了35种藻类/原生生物的分子信号，而墨西哥湾以前没有任何报道，因此为该地区的物种丰富度提供了重要的，经过分子验证的基线。我们还针对有效利用高通量序列数据评估生物群落提出了一些生物信息学建议。