Multi-tool marine metabarcoding bioassessment for baselining and monitoring species and communities in kelp habitats

The astonishing biological diversity found in Californian kelp forests requires efficient and robust monitoring tools to better understand ecological trends and mitigate against loss or disruption of ecosystem services due to human pressure and climate changes. With environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding becoming a popular biodiversity assessment approach, we set out to evaluate a combination of powerful, rapid and sustainable eDNA solutions for characterizing marine community composition in kelp-dominated habitats along the central California coast, in the newly proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary. We employed and compared the efficiency of several eDNA collection approaches, including ‘traditional’ surface water filtration, the collection of organisms encrusting cobble rocks and various deployments of an artificial passive sampler, the metaprobe (i.e., attached to divers, dangled from a boat, and cast from the shore using a fishing rod). By combining the information fr..., , # Data from: Multi-tool marine metabarcoding bioassessment for baselining and monitoring species and communities in kelp habitats

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.02v6wwqfv](10.5061/dryad.02v6wwqfv)

## Description of the data and file structure

This project contains raw reads data, metadata, MOTU tables and final datasets from samples collected using several eDNA collection approaches, including ‘traditional’ surface water filtration, the collection of organisms encrusting cobble rocks and various deployments of an artificial passive sampler, the metaprobe. Raw reads files and ngsfilter files with sample barcodes are from four different libraries, two sequenced with Tele02 12S barcode and two with COI.In all MOTU tables and final datasets, molecular operational taxonomic units (MOTUs) or species are represented in rows, while the columns correspond to their taxonomy and the different sampling sites.

### Files and variables

#### File: Lib1_Tele02_R1.fastq.gz

**Description:** Tele02 forw...,