ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Molecular Biology and Ecology
Assessing benthic community structure and diversity in the Western Pacific polymetallic nodule area: insights from multi-primer eDNA metabarcoding
Provisionally accepted
- 1China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China
- 2Third Institute of Oceanography Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen, China
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Deep-sea polymetallic nodules are considered a critical resource for meeting future global metal demands. However, current knowledge of benthic community composition and biodiversity patterns in polymetallic nodule regions remains highly limited, impeding baseline studies in these areas. In this study, we applied a multi-gene eDNA metabarcoding approach to analyze the community structure and diversity of prokaryotes (16S rRNA) and eukaryotes (18S rRNA and COI) in sediment layers (0-5 cm and 5-10 cm) from five sites within the Northwest Pacific polymetallic nodule province. The results revealed significant differences in eukaryotic community composition due to primer preferences: the V1V2 primer showed higher sensitivity for Foraminifera and Crustaceans, the V9 primer for Harpacticoida, while the COI primer demonstrated lower amplification efficiency compared to the two 18S rRNA primers. Furthermore, the alpha diversity of both bacterial and eukaryotic communities decreased significantly with increasing sediment depth, whereas no such clear trend was observed for archaeal communities, indicating divergent response patterns to the sedimentary environmental gradient. Our study confirms the high efficiency of eDNA technology for biological monitoring in polymetallic nodule contract areas, as it can overcome the limitations of traditional morphological methods and provide a scientific basis for biological baseline assessments prior to deep-sea mining.
Keywords: Benthic organisms, community diversity, Deep-sea polymetallic nodules, environmental DNA, metabarcoding
Received: 22 Aug 2025; Accepted: 12 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao, Li, He, Yang and Xia. 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: Jianxin Xia
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