Published September 27, 2024 | Version v1
Journal article Open

A long-term ecological research data set from the marine genetic monitoring programme ARMS-MBON 2018-2020

  • 1. ROR icon University of Gothenburg
  • 2. ROR icon Flanders Marine Institute
  • 3. ROR icon Instytut Oceanologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk
  • 4. ROR icon University of the Basque Country
  • 5. EDMO icon Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology & Aquaculture
  • 6. ROR icon Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
  • 7. EDMO icon French National Center for Scientific Research (head office)
  • 8. ROR icon Ionian University
  • 9. ROR icon University of Helsinki
  • 10. EDMO icon Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Hellenic National Oceanographic Data Centre
  • 11. ROR icon Universidade de Vigo
  • 12. ROR icon Nord University
  • 13. ROR icon Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier
  • 14. ROR icon Rega Institute for Medical Research
  • 15. ROR icon European Marine Biological Resource Centre
  • 16. EDMO icon Aarhus University

Description

Molecular methods such as DNA/eDNA metabarcoding have emerged as useful tools to document the biodiversity of complex communities over large spatio-temporal scales. We established an international Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (ARMS-MBON) combining standardised sampling using autonomous reef monitoring structures (ARMS) with metabarcoding for genetic monitoring of marine hard-bottom benthic communities. Here, we present the data of our first sampling campaign comprising 56 ARMS units deployed in 2018-2019 and retrieved in 2018-2020 across 15 observatories along the coasts of Europe and adjacent regions. We describe the open-access data set (image, genetic, and metadata) and explore the genetic data to show its potential for marine biodiversity monitoring and ecological research. Our analysis shows that ARMS recovered more than 60 eukaryotic phyla capturing diversity of up to ∼5,500 amplicon sequence variants and ∼1,800 operational taxonomic units, and up to ∼250 and ∼50 species per observatory using the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and 18S rRNA marker genes, respectively. Further, ARMS detected threatened, vulnerable and non-indigenous species often targeted in biological monitoring. We show that while deployment duration does not drive diversity estimates, sampling effort and sequencing depth across observatories do. We recommend that ARMS should be deployed for at least three to six months during the main growth season to use resources as efficiently as possible and that post-sequencing curation is applied to enable statistical comparison of spatio-temporal entities. We suggest that ARMS should be used in biological monitoring programmes and long-term ecological research and encourage the adoption of our ARMS-MBON protocols.

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Funding

European Commission
DTO-BioFlow - Integration of biodiversity monitoring data into the Digital Twin Ocean 101112823