Document of bibliographic reference 369016

BibliographicReference record

Type

Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Journal article

BibLvlCode

AS

Title

Multispecies environmental DNA metabarcoding sheds light on annual coral spawning events

Abstract

Synchronous multispecific coral spawning generally occurs annually and forms an integral part of the coral life cycle. Apart from spawning times and species participation, however, much else remains unknown. Here, we applied environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding to study two tropical reef sites of contrasting coral cover before, during and after coral spawning. Using coral-ITS2 and vertebrate-12S markers, we evaluated eDNA as an alternative monitoring tool by assessing its capabilities in detecting spawning species and tracking relative abundances of coral and fish eDNA. Over 3 years, elevated eDNA coral signals during the event (proportional read increase of up to five-fold) were observed, detecting a total of 38 coral and 133 fish species with all but one of the coral species visually observed to be spawning. This is also the first demonstration that eDNA metabarcoding can be used to infer the diurnal partitioning of night- and day-time spawning, spawning in coral species overlooked by visual surveys, and the associated changes in fish trophic structures as an indicator of spawning events. Our study paves the way for applied quantitative eDNA metabarcoding approaches to better study ephemeral and important biological events.

WebOfScience code

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000835843900001

Bibliographic citation

Ip, Y.C.A.; Chang, J.J.M.; Tun, K.P.P.; Meier, R.; Huang, D. (2023). Multispecies environmental DNA metabarcoding sheds light on annual coral spawning events. Mol. Ecol. 32(23): 6474-6488. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mec.16621

Topic

Marine

Is peer reviewed

true

Access rights

open access

Is accessible for free

true