Document of bibliographic reference 396571

BibliographicReference record

Type

Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Journal article

BibLvlCode

AS

Title

eDNA metabarcoding captures a decline of coral diversity at Taiping Island after an outbreak of Crown-of-Thorns starfish

Abstract

Coral reefs are known to be one of the most diverse marine ecosystems on earth. However, these impor?tant ecosystems are heavily stressed by natural and anthro?pogenic activities. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabar?coding is an innovative approach that can provide a greater diversity of taxonomic detections, non-invasive sampling, and a lower feld component cost than traditional biomoni?toring methods. Taiping Island (Itu Aba Island) is one of the major coral reef islands situated in the South China Sea where underwater visual surveys documented an outbreak of Crown-of-Thorns starfsh (COTS) in 2021. In our study, we used eDNA metabarcoding to investigate whether there were shifts in coral communities by comparing pre- and post?COTS outbreak communities. One metabarcoding assay tar?geting the 18S gene and two assays targeting the ITS2 region (one of these assays specifcally targeting Acroporid corals) were applied to 42 seawater samples collected in 2019 and 2021 from 12 sites around Taiping Island. Based on these three metabarcoding assays, 52 unique hard coral species were identifed, corresponding to a total of 51 species in 2019 and 26 species in 2021. Our results indicated a sig?nifcant decline in coral diversity but an increase in sponge diversity from the phylum porifera at Taiping Island in 2021. We suggest that these faunal shifts may be due to active feeding and disturbance of COTS at outbreak proportions that result in habitat changes. Our fndings also suggest that eDNA can continue to serve as a promising tool to monitor the change in coral as well as reef-associated taxa during devastating outbreak events.

Bibliographic citation

Peiris, M.A.K.; Liu, S.-Y.V.; Dibattista, J.D.; Bunce, M.; Chen, Y.-H.; Shen, K.-N.; Chang, C.-W. (2024). eDNA metabarcoding captures a decline of coral diversity at Taiping Island after an outbreak of Crown-of-Thorns starfish. Coral Reefs 2024. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00338-024-02566-w

Topic

Marine

Is peer reviewed

true