Metabarcoding of environmental DNA has provided striking insights into marine microbial diversity. With this approach, we assessed the diversity of metazoan assemblages and their temporal variations at the Long-Term Ecological Research site MareChiara (LTER-MC) in the Gulf of Naples (Mediterranean Sea). The Illumina sequencing of the V4-18S rRNA fragment from 48 surface samples collected from 2011 to 2013 produced a total of 5 011 047 marine metazoan reads. The normalized dataset was generally dominated by copepods (60.3%), followed by annelids (34.7%) mostly represented by the invasive benthic polychaete Hydroides elegans. Non-copepod holoplankton was mainly represented by siphonophores, rotifers, and appendicularians, with occasional mass occurrences of jellyfish. The rest of meroplankton (mainly molluscs, annelids, and anthozoans) showed a high diversity, covering all 11 zooplankton phyla, from Porifera to Craniata. A high number of copepod genera were identified, with seasonal recurrence matching patterns observed in 30 years of studies in the Gulf of Naples. Despite limitations related to the molecular marker resolution and reference dataset, the study provided valuable insights into diversity and seasonal patterns of the whole metazoan assemblage, expanding the knowledge on rare or hardly identifiable taxa and confirming DNA metabarcoding as a powerful approach to be integrated at LTER sites.

中文翻译：

---

在地中海长期生态研究地点通过 eDNA 元条形码编码的后生动物多样性和季节性

环境 DNA 的元条形码为海洋微生物多样性提供了惊人的见解。通过这种方法，我们在那不勒斯湾（地中海）的长期生态研究地点 MareChiara (LTER-MC) 评估了后生动物组合的多样性及其时间变化。对 2011 年至 2013 年收集的 48 个表面样本的 V4-18S rRNA 片段进行 Illumina 测序，共产生了 5 011 047 个海洋后生动物读数。归一化数据集通常以桡足类动物（60.3%）为主，其次是环节动物（34.7%），主要以侵入性底栖多毛类Hydrides elegans为代表。非桡足类全浮游生物主要以虹吸管、轮虫和附肢动物为代表，偶有大量出现水母。其余的浮游生物（主要是软体动物、环节动物、和anthozoans）表现出高度的多样性，涵盖了从Porifera到Caniata的所有11个浮游动物门。确定了大量桡足类属，在那不勒斯湾 30 年的研究中观察到季节性复发匹配模式。尽管分子标记分辨率和参考数据集存在局限性，但该研究为整个后生动物组合的多样性和季节性模式提供了有价值的见解，扩展了对稀有或难以识别的分类群的知识，并确认 DNA 元条形码是一种在 LTER 整合的强大方法网站。