Chongzhao Wang‡§|, Zhenhua Ma¶, Kun Cao#¤, Xin Wang¤«, Rui Xi¤«, Ting Jiang¤«, Rui Yang¤¶, Yingchun Xing#¤Corresponding author: Chongzhao Wang ( 1393528259@qq.com ) Corresponding author: Yingchun Xing ( xingych@cafs.ac.cn ) © Chongzhao Wang, Zhenhua Ma, Kun Cao, Xin Wang, Rui Xi, Ting Jiang, Rui Yang, Yingchun Xing. This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Wang C, Ma Z, Cao K, Wang X, Xi R, Jiang T, Yang R, Xing Y (2024) Species diversity of fish at the Wuzhizhou Island, South China Sea based on environmental DNA. ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e127158 |  |
The Wuzhizhou Island (WZZ) is located in the Haitang Bay at the northern region of the Sanya, Hainan Island. The sea area surrouding WZZ represents a typical tropical marine ecosystem, which is characterized by diverse and complex habitats. Therefore, there are a rich variety of marine fish species at WZZ area. The marine ecosystem of WZZ had experienced seriously destroyed in 1970s - 1980s, initially recoveried in 1990s and constructed as the first national tropical marine ranch demonstration area of China in 2019. Obviously, the fish are important high trophic vertebrates in the marine ecosystem, understanding composition and distribution of fish species could help us to recognize status of ecosystem of WZZ and supply scientific data for construction of national marine ranch demonstration area. This study used eDNA technology to investigate the composition of fish community surrounding WZZ, and provided a scientific basis for realizing and protecting marine ecosystem of the South China Sea.
The waters around WZZ are part of the South China Sea, and they have abundant marine fish resources. Although some researches have investigated fish species of WZZ, however, the data are still incomplete due to the limitation of sampling methods and survey seasons. In this study, we hope to take advantages of eDNA and try to supplement data of fish species at WZZ as many as possible. Based on eDNA, this study provides the data on 179 fish species and 9 fish genera belonging to 17 orders, 63 families and 124 genera, and they are more comprehensive records of fish species surrounding WZZ. In addition, the information of Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs) for taxon identification are also provided, aiming to contribute to the establishment of a specific eDNA taxon database for fish of the South China Sea. This study includes two datasets, which are occurrence of fish taxa at WZZ area, as well as MOTUs sequences and geographical coordinate information of sampling sites. The “fish taxon occurrences” dataset presents records on taxonomic, distribution, habitat condition of 188 fish species detected using eDNA, as well as the latitude and longitude information of the sampling sites, the "MOTUs information" dataset provides the MOTUs sequences, source of sequences, abundance of sequences for 188 fish species, also includes the species matched in NCBI and the best NCBI Blast sequence similarity.