RESEARCH ARTICLE Biomonitoring of marine vertebrates in Monterey Bay using eDNA metabarcoding Elizabeth A. Andruszkiewicz1, Hilary A. Starks2, Francisco P. Chavez3, Lauren M. Sassoubre1¤, Barbara A. Block4, Alexandria B. Boehm1* 1 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States of America, 2 Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States of America, 3 Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Moss Landing, CA, United States of America, 4 Department of Biology, Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Pacific Grove, CA, United States of America a1111111111 ¤ Current address: Department of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering, University at Buffalo, The a1111111111 State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, United States of America a1111111111 *
[email protected] a1111111111 a1111111111 Abstract Molecular analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) can be used to assess vertebrate biodi- versity in aquatic systems, but limited work has applied eDNA technologies to marine OPEN ACCESS waters. Further, there is limited understanding of the spatial distribution of vertebrate eDNA Citation: Andruszkiewicz EA, Starks HA, Chavez FP, in marine waters. Here, we use an eDNA metabarcoding approach to target and amplify a Sassoubre LM, Block BA, Boehm AB (2017) Biomonitoring of marine vertebrates in Monterey hypervariable region of the mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene to characterize vertebrate com- Bay using eDNA metabarcoding. PLoS ONE 12(4): munities at 10 oceanographic stations spanning 45 km within the Monterey Bay National e0176343. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS). In this study, we collected three biological replicates of small pone.0176343 volume water samples (1 L) at 2 depths at each of the 10 stations.