Abstract

Marinas are high-priority targets for marine non-indigenous species (NIS), where they compose a large portion of the biofouling communities. The practicality of water samples collection makes environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding an interesting tool for routine NIS surveys. Here the effectiveness of water-eDNA-metabarcoding to identify biofouling NIS, in 10 marinas from western France, was examined. Morphological identification of specimens collected in quadrats brought out 18 sessile benthic NIS beneath floating pontoons. Water-eDNA-metabarcoding detected two thirds of them, failing to detect important NIS. However, sampling and bioinformatics filtering steps can be optimized to identify more species. In addition, this method allowed the detection of additional NIS from neighboring micro-habitats. Caution should, however, be taken when reporting putative novel NIS, because of errors in species assignment. This work highlights that water-eDNA-metabarcoding is effective for active (targeted) NIS surveys and could be significantly improved for its further use in marine NIS passive surveys.

摘要

码头是海洋非本土物种 (NIS) 的高度优先目标，它们构成了生物污损群落的很大一部分。水样采集的实用性使环境 DNA (eDNA) 元条形码成为常规 NIS 调查的有趣工具。在这里，检测了法国西部 10 个码头中水-eDNA-metabarcoding 识别生物污染 NIS 的有效性。在样方中采集的标本的形态学鉴定在浮桥下发现了 18 个无柄的底栖生物 NIS。Water-eDNA-metabarcoding 检测到其中三分之二，未能检测到重要的 NIS。但是，可以优化采样和生物信息学过滤步骤以识别更多物种。此外，这种方法允许从邻近的微生境中检测到额外的 NIS。然而，应该小心，在报告假定的新型 NIS 时，由于物种分配错误。这项工作强调了水-eDNA 元条形码对主动（目标）NIS 调查是有效的，并且可以显着改善其在海洋 NIS 被动调查中的进一步使用。