METABARCODING AS A TOOL FOR PHYTOPLANKTON IDENTIFICATION IN SALINE LAKES

This study presents a metabarcoding analysis of phytoplankton collected in autumn 2023 from saline lake Pečena slatina (Southern Banat, Serbia). The aim was to identify algae and cyanobacteria from the water column using a single genetic marker. After filtering the water, eDNA was isolated, fragment of the 23S rRNA gene was amplified, and sequencing was performed using MiSeq technology. Bioinformatic analysis revealed a total of 54 amplicon sequence variants, 25 taxa were assigned to the species level using Phytool v.3 and NCBI database. The metabarcoding analysis revealed 2.5 times more taxa than the conventional method of light inverted microscopy.