Newly designed foraminifera primers identify habitat-specific lineages through metabarcoding analyses

We compared foraminiferal biodiversity across marine, brackish, and freshwater habitats. We designed foraminifera-specific SSU rDNA primers for community DNA analyses and tested our primers across several environments including intertidal zones, coastal ecosystems, and freshwater vernal pools from New England, Guam, and Palau. Our survey demonstrates the power of our primer to assess foraminiferal diversity across various habitats and detect specific foraminiferal lineages in each tested habitat.