Diet analysis of Clithon retropictum in south coast of Korea using metabarcoding

SoonWon Hwang; Kwangjin Cho; Donguk Han; Yonghae Back; Eunjeong Lee; Sangkyu Park

doi:10.5141/jee.23.084

pISSN 2287-8327 eISSN 2288-1220

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Published online April 4, 2024
https://doi.org/10.5141/jee.23.084

Journal of Ecology and Environment (2024) 48:15

Diet analysis of Clithon retropictum in south coast of Korea using metabarcoding

SoonWon Hwang¹, Kwangjin Cho², Donguk Han³, Yonghae Back⁴, Eunjeong Lee³, Sangkyu Park^1*

¹Department of Biological Science, Ajou University, Suwon 16499, Republic of Korea
²National Institute of Ecology, Seocheon 33657, Republic of Korea
³PGA Eco and Bio Diversity Institute, ECO Korea, Goyang 10449, Republic of Korea
⁴Wetland Korea Institute, Incheon 22851, Republic of Korea

Correspondence to:Sangkyu Park
E-mail daphnia@ajou.ac.kr

Eunjeong Lee’s affiliation is Department of Biological Science, Kongju National University, Kongju, Republic of Korea.

Received: November 10, 2023; Accepted: December 21, 2023

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The publisher of this article is The Ecological Society of Korea in collaboration with The Korean Society of Limnology

Abstract

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Abstract

Background: This study focused on the diet of Clithon retropictum, level II endangered species in Korea. Since the development of brackish water zones has led to a decline in the population of this species, to obtain information on the ecology of C. retropictum required for its conservation and restoration. To investigate the actual preys of C. retropictum in south coast of Korea, we conducted high-throughput sequencing and metabarcoding techniques to extract DNA from gut contents and periphyton in their habitats.
Results: Total 118 taxonomic groups were detected from periphyton samples. 116 were Chromista and Cyanobacteria dominated in the most samples. In gut contents samples, 98 taxonomic groups were detected. Similar to the results of periphyton, 96 were Chromista and Cyanobacteria dominated in the most samples. In the principal component analysis based on the presence/absence of taxonomic groups, gut content composition showed more clustered patterns corresponding to their habitats. Bryophyta was the most crucial taxonomic group explaining the difference between periphyton and gut contents compositions of C. retropictum.
Conclusions: Our finding suggests that C. retropictum may not randomly consume epilithic algae but instead, likely to supplement their diet with Bryophyta.

Keywords: brackish water zone, Clithon retropictum, diet analysis, gut contents, metabarcoding