Assessing Biodiversity using Metabarcoding

HINWEIS: Der Vortrag wird in englischer Sprache gehalten!

Biodiversity is the result of millions of years of evolution and forms the basis of the earth’s life support system, but the magnitude and relative diversity of global species richness remain unknown. Ecosystem function, resilience and recovery can only be addressed if biodiversity is known. Classical taxonomy catalogues are based on morphological traits and on a species by species basis, which for highly speciose and small sized organisms it was simply impracticable.

Advances have been made using DNA-based technologies for the identification and classification of micro and meiofaunal taxa, by establishing methodologies for species identification through cutting edge sequencing techniques like next generation sequencing (NGS). NGS techniques include cheap, very fast and high capacity DNA sequencing, producing large amounts of data at a low cost. Notwithstanding, conceptual issues such as the choice of the gene(s) used and drivers of diversity artifacts are key considerations in large-scale environmental studies. NGS has been used for the quantification of bacteria, archaea, and viruses but large knowledge gaps still exist regarding the organization of diversity within several eukaryotic kingdoms, including the marine meiobenthos. Nowadays, it is possible to assess biodiversity levels and trends from a standard biomonitoring bulk environmental sample using metabarcoding.

In this perspective the information retrieved from NGS studies would have a dual appraisal by contributing to a better understanding of the ecosystem status by means of biomonitoring diagnostics but also for total biodiversity assessment. It is also important to use and/or extent reference libraries to establish DNA barcode-based identification systems either to target macro- or micro- organisms derived from environmental samples. Overall, this talk will give an overview of opportunities and limitations of environmental metabarcoding approaches.