Testing the influence of incomplete dna barcode libraries on ecological status assessment of mediterranean transitional waters
Pinna M. Saccomanno B. Marini G. Zangaro F. Kabayeva A. Khalaj M. Shaimardan L. D’attis S. Tzafesta E. Specchia V.
November 2021MDPI
Biology
2021#10Issue 11
The ecological assessment of European aquatic ecosystems is regulated under the framework directives on strategy for water and marine environments. Benthic macroinvertebrates are the most used biological quality element for ecological assessment of rivers, coastal-marines, and transitional waters. The morphological identification of benthic macroinvertebrates is the current tool for their assessment. Recently, DNA-based tools have been proposed as effective alternatives. The main current limits of DNA-based applications include the incompleteness of species recorded in the DNA barcode reference libraries and the primers bias. Here, we analysed the influence of the incompleteness of DNA barcode databases on species diversity indices, ecological indicators, and ecological assessment in transitional waters of the southeast Mediterranean, taking into account the availability of commonly sequenced and deposited genomic regions for listed species. The ecological quality status assigned through the potential application of both approaches to the analysed transitional water ecosystems was different in 27% of sites. We also analysed the inter-specific genetic distances to evaluate the potential application of the DNA metabarcoding method. Overall, this work highlights the importance to expand the barcode databases and to analyse, at the regional level, the gaps in the DNA barcodes.
Benthic macroinvertebrates , Biomonitoring programs , DNA-based methods , Ecological status assessment , Incomplete DNA barcode reference libraries , Mediterranean transitional waters
Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies, University of Salento, DiSTeBA, Via Monteroni 165, Lecce, 73100, Italy
Research Centre for Fisheries and Aquaculture of Aquatina di Frigole, DiSTeBA, University of Salento, Lecce, 73100, Italy
Department of Biotechnology, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Al-Farabi Avenue, Almaty, 71-050040, Kazakhstan
Department of Basic Sciences, Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, 48 Sari, Iran
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies
Research Centre for Fisheries and Aquaculture of Aquatina di Frigole
Department of Biotechnology
Department of Basic Sciences
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026