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

在2020财年，我们的研究因COVID-19而推迟。简而言之，澳大利亚方面经历了几次封锁，日本也有严格的出入境限制，我们计划在澳大利亚进行实地考察并邀请研究人员来日本是不可能的。因此，我们采取了务实的做法，并订购了实施研究所需的大部分设备，包括一个大型生物库深度冷冻机和我们可以在现场使用的小型真空泵。我们还与澳大利亚团队举行了多次会议，并制定了2021财年的计划（详见下文），包括在COVID-19问题持续存在的情况下的备用计划。最后，我们继续与澳大利亚同行合作收集冲绳的eDNA数据，并在《科学报告》上发表了一篇科学论文。这项工作很受欢迎，在该杂志2020年下载最多的生态学论文中排名第17位。这项工作检查了冲绳原始和受影响地点的海洋后生动物的eDNA多样性，显示在受影响更大的地点有更多的碎片化和更少的功能冗余。此外，该研究还指出，由于人为影响而经历更替的大多数海洋分类群是研究较少的群体，如海绵、环节动物和其他所谓的“小分类群”。

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'.