Eukaryotic diversity in the largest glacial lake of the Iberian Peninsula: a metabarcoding approach

Biodiversity assessments are very important to address any ecological and evolutionary question in Biology, as well as to face the persistent loss of diversity. Although unicellular eukaryotes or protists represent the majority of the eukaryotic diversity, classic studies on biodiversity were extremely biased towards multicellular lineages, such as animals, fungi and plants. The incorporation of molecular techniques in biodiversity monitoring have contributed to overcome this bias. However, most surveys have focused so far on marine environments, neglecting freshwater habitats, which may harbour novel eukaryotic diversity.In this study, we analyzed various samples of eDNA (sediments, water column and biofilms) from Sanabria lake, the largest glacial lake of the Iberian Peninsula, which is currently under an eutrophication process. Our main objectives were to describe the general eukaryotic diversity, assess the community structure and search for phylogenetic novel diversity.