Invertebrate diversity in the hypersaline lakes of Ladakh

We assessed for the first time the composition of microbial eukaryotes among the three most prominent saline lakes situated in the trans -Himalayan region of Ladakh in the Tibetan plateau. We sampled in the summer season and the V4 region of the 18S rRNA gene was sequenced on the Illumina Miseq platform. The present study results show the effectiveness of eDNA metabarcoding to unravel species diversity. And also, for curating and cataloging biodiversity so as to create a reference baseline that could be used against future samples to compare as well as in order to observe community changes in this ecosystem.