Voyage 4 of the Aurora Australis, 2018 environmental DNA samples analysed with group specific metabarcoding markers

In March 2018, 23 environmental DNA (eDNA) samples (2 L of filtered seawater) were collected between Hobart, Tasmania and subantarctic Macquarie Island. These samples were processed using six different genetic metabarcoding markers targeting different taxonomic groups within the metazoan clade: A broad cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) marker targeting all metazoans, and five different 16S markers targeting fish, cephalopods and crustaceans (one degenerate marker), fish (two markers of different lengths), cephalopods (one marker) and crustaceans (one marker). The aim of this study was to identify an ideal set of molecular markers to identify as many metazoan species as possible from small environmental samples, with a particular focus on vertebrates, crustaceans and cephalopods. The data and methods are described in the word file "V4 2018 eDNA group specific markers.docx", results are summarised in the excel file "Marker.detection.xlsx" and additional sample information is in the excel files "2018_11_07_eDNA-sample-info.xls" and "sample.map.csv". Each genetic marker used in this study has its own folder, containing the raw FASTQ sequencing data, the processed FASTA sequencing data, the bioinformatics processing pipeline, the zOTU fasta file, BLAST output, MEGAN output and curated zOTU table. For further explanations please refer to the word file "V4 2018 eDNA group specific markers.docx".