@article {54555,
	title = {Large-scale biomonitoring of remote and threatened ecosystems via high-throughput sequencing},
	journal = {PLOS ONE},
	volume = {10},
	year = {2015},
	month = {10/2015},
	pages = {e0138432},
	abstract = {Biodiversity metrics are critical for assessment and monitoring of ecosystems threatened by anthropogenic stressors. Existing sorting and identification methods are too expensive and labour-intensive to be scaled up to meet management needs. Alternately, a high-throughput DNA sequencing approach could be used to determine biodiversity metrics from bulk environmental samples collected as part of a large-scale biomonitoring program. Here we show that both morphological and DNA sequence-based analyses are suitable for recovery of individual taxonomic richness, estimation of proportional abundance, and calculation of biodiversity metrics using a set of 24 benthic samples collected in the Peace-Athabasca Delta region of Canada. The high-throughput sequencing approach was able to recover all metrics with a higher degree of taxonomic resolution than morphological analysis. The reduced cost and increased capacity of DNA sequence-based approaches will finally allow environmental monitoring programs to operate at the geographical and temporal scale required by industrial and regulatory end-users.},
	keywords = {anthropogenic stressors, biodiversity metrics, DNA sequencing, environmental monitoring},
	doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0138432.s001},
	url = {http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0138432},
	author = {Gibson, Joel F. and Shokralla, Shadi and Curry, Colin and Baird, Donald J. and Monk, Wendy A. and King, Ian and Hajibabaei, Mehrdad}
}
