Wed, 10/02/2024 - 4:00pm Athens Seminars Exploring microeukaryotic biodiversity and their associated microbiomes in marine systems using eDNA/metabarcoding Environmental DNA (eDNA) and metabarcoding approaches have drastically changed the way we currently explore Earth’s biodiversity. Nowadays, eDNA/metabarcoding approaches are widely used for characterizing marine biodiversity across all types of habitats (e.g., benthic, pelagic, coastal, deep sea, etc.). For smaller metazoans (i.e., < 1 mm long), where taxonomy is often challenging and time consuming, eDNA/metabarcoding has proven to be useful and effective in detecting ecological patterns. Furthermore, these methods have been largely used to characterize host-associated microbiomes, thus helping us to better understand the ecological roles of diverse marine taxa. As the cost of sequencing continues to decrease and the quality and amount of data continues to improve, eDNA/metabarcoding will become the new standard in biodiversity and/or ecological surveys.
