Gibson Joel F, Shokralla Shadi, Curry Colin, Baird Donald J, Monk Wendy A, King Ian, Hajibabaei Mehrdad
Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada; Environment Canada, Canada Centre for Inland Waters, Burlington, Ontario, Canada.
Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2015 Oct 21;10(10):e0138432. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0138432. eCollection 2015.
Biodiversity metrics are critical for assessment and monitoring of ecosystems threatened by anthropogenic stressors. Existing sorting and identification methods are too expensive and labour-intensive to be scaled up to meet management needs. Alternately, a high-throughput DNA sequencing approach could be used to determine biodiversity metrics from bulk environmental samples collected as part of a large-scale biomonitoring program. Here we show that both morphological and DNA sequence-based analyses are suitable for recovery of individual taxonomic richness, estimation of proportional abundance, and calculation of biodiversity metrics using a set of 24 benthic samples collected in the Peace-Athabasca Delta region of Canada. The high-throughput sequencing approach was able to recover all metrics with a higher degree of taxonomic resolution than morphological analysis. The reduced cost and increased capacity of DNA sequence-based approaches will finally allow environmental monitoring programs to operate at the geographical and temporal scale required by industrial and regulatory end-users.
生物多样性指标对于评估和监测受人为压力源威胁的生态系统至关重要。现有的分类和鉴定方法成本过高且劳动强度大，无法扩大规模以满足管理需求。另外，可以使用高通量DNA测序方法，从作为大规模生物监测计划一部分收集的大量环境样本中确定生物多样性指标。在这里，我们表明，形态学分析和基于DNA序列的分析都适用于恢复单个分类丰富度、估计比例丰度，以及使用在加拿大和平-阿萨巴斯卡三角洲地区收集的一组24个底栖样本计算生物多样性指标。高通量测序方法能够以比形态学分析更高的分类分辨率恢复所有指标。基于DNA序列的方法成本降低且能力增强，最终将使环境监测计划能够在工业和监管终端用户要求的地理和时间尺度上运行。
