Impact of offshore oil drilling operations on the diversity of marine benthic Foraminifera - Raw sequence reads

Environmental impacts from offshore oil and gas activities are currently partly determined by measuring changes in macro-infaunal diversity determined using microscopy. In this study, we evaluated the applicability of using foraminiferal-specific metabarcoding (i.e. high-throughput sequencing of foraminiferal environmental DNA marker sequences). Sediment samples were collected along distance gradients from two oil platform wellheads (WHs) off Taranaki (New Zealand) and their physico-chemical properties, foraminiferal environmental DNA/RNA, and macro-infaunal composition analysed.Our results suggest that foraminiferal metabarcoding may provide a more accurate assessment of the conditions of environmental communities at the time of sampling than current methods based on morphological examination. These data highlight the potential of foraminiferal metabarcoding as an effective asset to existing monitoring techniques.

当前，近海油气活动的环境影响评估，部分依托显微镜镜检测得的大型底栖宏动物（macro-infaunal）多样性变化来完成。本研究评估了有孔虫特异性元条形码（foraminiferal-specific metabarcoding，即针对有孔虫环境DNA标记序列开展高通量测序）技术的适用性。研究团队在新西兰塔拉纳基（Taranaki）海域的两座石油平台井口（WHs）沿线，按距离梯度采集沉积物样本，并对样本的理化性质、有孔虫环境DNA/RNA以及大型底栖宏动物群落组成进行了分析。研究结果显示，相较于当前基于形态学观测的检测方法，有孔虫元条形码技术可更为精准地评估采样时刻的环境群落状态。本研究数据证实，有孔虫元条形码技术可作为现有监测技术的有效补充，具备良好的应用潜力。