ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Conservation and Sustainability
This article is part of the Research TopicSmart Technologies for Real-Time Monitoring and Conservation of Marine EcosystemsView all 4 articles
Environmental DNA metabarcoding enriches the conventional survey of a high diverse fish community in the Dongsha Atoll
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Oceanography, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
- 2National Academy of Marine Research, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
- 3National Taiwan University Department of Agronomy, Taipei City, Taiwan
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To effectively conserve coral reef ecosystems, it is essential to monitor changes in fish fauna using minimally invasive methods. In this study, we conducted a fish survey in the Dongsha Atoll using eDNA metabarcoding. Analyzing 37 sequencing units from 26 water samples collected across 12 sites from May 2017 to September 2018, we identified 421 species from 79 families. Among these, 192 species had not been recorded in previous conventional surveys. Some of these newly recorded species are fast-swimmers, while others may be larvae or eggs, which are challenging to observe visually. However, 68% of species documented in previous records were not detected in our study. This limitation is likely due to insufficient samplings, primer specificity, fish characteristics, and rapid DNA degradation in the dynamic physical and chemical conditions (e.g., temperature, pH) of the coastal environment. Despite that eDNA metabarcoding cannot capture the full range of species within the atoll, it effectively complements visual census surveys by enriching our understanding of the diverse fish community in marine habitats.
Keywords: environmental DNA, the Dongsha Atoll, Fish fauna, Biodiversity monitoring, reeffish
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 03 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Yang, Shen, Chiu and Liao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Te-Yu Liao
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