NGS-metabarcoding revealing novel foraminiferal diversity in the Western Pacific Magellan Seamount sediments

Seamount is a unique deep-sea ecosystem widely distributed in the world.Its biodiversity is vibrant due to its specific geographical and hydrological conditions.However,the diversity and features of foraminifera in such an environment have rarely been studied.We extracted environmental DNA(eDNA)in sedime nts and amplified the partial small subunit ribo somal DNA(SSU rDNA)of fo raminife ra to understand the foraminiferal diversity from four sites in Magellan Seamount(Western Pacific Ocean).Partial S SU rDNA sequencing was conducted and 912979 foraminiferal reads were obtained and gathered into 266 operational taxonomic units(OTUs).In the available dataset,a high proportion of rare OTUs and low identity OTUs in each studied sample showed that the Magellan Seamount foraminiferal community might have a high genetic novelty.The relative abundance of foraminifera varied between replicates probably due to the existence of bias in amplification process and patchiness of the deep-sea floor.It showed that the Magellan Seamount has a relatively high benthic foraminiferal diversity characterized mainly by monothalamiids(76.37%of total reads)in association with rotaliids(19.03%of total reads),including planktic foraminiferal sequences(38.58%of rotaliids;7.36%of total reads).The remaining reads were assigned to miliolids(0.83%of total reads)and textulariids(0.66%of total reads),and 3.11%of total reads are unassigned to a specific family.The co mparative analysis with foraminiferal assemblage s from coastal and deep-sea environme nts indicated that seamounts could aggregate species from a nearby deep-sea.