Development of a new set of PCR primers for eDNA metabarcoding decapod crustaceans

The Decapoda is one of the largest orders within the class Malacostraca, comprising approximately 14,000 extant species and including many commercially important species. For biodiversity monitoring in a non-invasive manner, a new set of PCR primers was developed for metabarcoding environmental DNA (eDNA) from decapod crustaceans. The new primers (herein named “MiDeca”) were designed for two conservative regions of the mitochondrial 16S rRNA gene, which amplify a short, hyper-variable region (153–184 bp, 164 bp on average) with sufficient interspecific variations. With the use of MiDeca primers and tissue-derived DNA extracts, we successfully determined those sequences (154–189 bp) from 250 species, placed in 186 genera and 65 families across the suborder Dendrobranchiata and 10 of the 11 infraorders of the suborder Pleocyemata. We also preliminarily attempted eDNA metabarcoding from natural seawater collected at Banda, Tateyama, the Pacific coast of central Japan and detected 42 decapod species including 34 and 8 species with sequence identities of > 98% and 80–98%, respectively. The results suggest the usefulness of eDNA metabarcoding with MiDeca primers for biodiversity monitoring of the decapod species. It appears, however, that further optimisation of primer sequences would still be necessary to avoid possible PCR dropouts from eDNA extracts.