Marine environmental DNA metabarcoding: understanding oceanic islands and mainland sites across anthropogenic gradients in two hemispheres

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In FY2020, our research was delayed by COVID-19. In short, the Australia side experienced several lockdowns, and Japan also had strict limits on entry and exit, making our planned field work in Australia along with inviting researchers to Japan impossible.Thus, we took a pragmatic course, and ordered the large majority of the equipment needed to implement the research, including a large BioBank deep freezer and small vacuum pumps we can use in the field. We also had numerous meetings with the Australian team, and planned for FY2021 (detailed below), including back-up plans in the case of continued COVID-19 problems.Finally, we continued to collaborate with our Australian counterparts on collected eDNA data from Okinawa, and published a scientific paper in Scientific Reports. This work was well received, and ranks #17 on most downloaded Ecology papers in the journal for 2020. The work examines marine metazoan diversity from eDNA at pristine and impacted sites in Okinawa, showing more fragmentation and less functional redundancy in more impacted sites. As well, the work notes that the majority of marine taxa experiencing turnover due to anthropogenic impacts are less well-studied groups such as sponges, annelids, and other so-called 'minor taxa'.