Assessing temporal changes in eukaryotic communities in Baltic Sea coastal sediments: comparison of V9 and V4 regions of the 18S rRNA gene

In this study, a metabarcoding approach is used to target the eukaryote communities in two localities from the Western Gulf of Finland coastal sediments over a period of two years. The aim of the study is to identify temporal changes in the eukaryotic communities at these two localities, and to demonstrate the potential of the metabarcoding approach for environmental assessment in a brackish coastal sediment setting. Both the V4 and the V9 hypervariable regions of the 18S rRNA gene were targeted.