In order to protect marine communities from the many human activities harming them, management efforts based upon robust species distribution data are needed. eDNA metabarcoding is a promising technique for the undestructive, cheap and effective gathering of such data, but many questions still require answering before eDNA metabarcoding can live up to its promised potential.
This master thesis aimed to contribute to the development of the technique by establishing and evaluating the effectiveness of an eDNA metabarcoding workflow for metazoan biodiversity monitoring in the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS).
By comparing obtained results to those from other BPNS monitoring studies, false-negative error rates in the established eDNA metabarcoding workflow are presumed to be high, severely limiting its ability to distinguish between BPNS communities. Despite this, our workflow was also able to detect several species that went undetected in previous surveys employing traditional methods. eDNA metabarcoding is therefore deemed a worthwhile addition in the current BPNS monitoring toolkit, and several improvements for the future use of the established workflow are recommended.
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