Rediscovering pelagic biodiversity:  Progress, promise, and challenges of metabarcoding of microbes to mammals

Novel approaches are transforming our understanding and appreciation for pelagic biodiversity and the significance for ocean ecosystem function. Metabarcoding (high-throughput DNA sequencing of barcode gene regions from environmental samples) is being widely used for analysis of diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine organisms from microbes to mammals. Metabarcoding allows improved detection of rare, cryptic and novel taxa, resulting in new global estimates of marine biodiversity and new understanding of the dynamics of marine food webs and ecosystems. There remain many technical and conceptual challenges for analysis and interpretation of metabarcoding results. Research is needed to evaluate and compare results from different marker gene regions and bioinformatics approaches, and for validation and ground-truthing of metabarcoding results. Progress is being made in the use of metabarcoding for quantification of taxon abundance or biomass, examination of trophic interactions and food-web dynamics, remote detection of marine organisms based on eDNA (environmental DNA), and applications for time-series monitoring and ecosystem assessment.

Convenors:  Ann Bucklin (University of Connecticut, USA) and

                      Bengt Karlson (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Sweden)
Sponsor:  Scientific Committee for Ocean Research (SCOR),

                  MetaZooGene Working Group (SCOR WG157)

Symposium Venue:  Svenska Mässan, Swedish Exhibition & Congress Centre (Gothenburg, Sweden) 

 Symposium Date:  September 13, 2019

[CLICK HERE to register or submit an abstract]:  This Symposium is open to the public by prior registration.

Registration is free, but must be done on/before September 6, 2019.

Presentation abstracts are requested by July 19, 2019.