Metabarcoding of zooplankton from Norpac net samples in Mombetsu, Hokkaido Japan. uncultured marine eukaryote

Zooplankton plays an important role in the oceans, in biogeochemical cycling, and providing a food source for commercially important fish larvae. We newly registered zooplankton of 18S rDNA 160 sequences of 94 species and 28S rDNA 159 sequences of 93 species belonged to phylums Arthropoda and Chaetognatha, which identified by morphological classification. In 18S rDNA 52 species belonging 29 genera and in 28S rDNA 40 species belonging 24 genera were novel sequences at the species level. The genus with a large number of sequence and species were Oithona and Oncaea for both 18S and 28S rDNA, and Clausocalanus for 18S rDNA. In the metagenomic field samples from the Sea of Okhotsk, 24 (21%) of 91 species from 118 samples of 18S rDNA and 19 (34%) of 56 species from 194 samples of 28S rDNA consisted of our newly registered species. It was demonstrated that the accuracy of species identification can be improved by increasing the number of registered gene sequences in field samples as well.