Morpho-taxonomy and DNA barcoding of Polychaeta
A total of 11,466 macrofaunal individuals from 42 grabs across six farms
comprised 82 Polychaeta and three non-Polychaeta vermiform morphospecies
(Table S4). Combining morpho-taxonomy with BIN-based taxonomy derived
from DNA barcoding analyses lead to the identification of a total of 150
taxa plus 6 ’combined BINs’ (described earlier), all of which were
Polychaeta except five taxa. A total of 11,445 Polychaeta individuals
were counted, with 1279, 431, 3395, 763, 1029, and 4548 collected from
BI, BS, MI, MR, PP, and VP farms, respectively (Table 1). The number of
Polychaeta collected at each station varied from one (BS, 0 m) to 984
(VP, 30 m). All but two of the Polychaeta taxa sampled could be assigned
to at least the family level via barcode analysis, which determined
there were 32 Polychaeta families sampled. Numbers of individuals for
each Polychaeta family were summarized in Table S5. The most abundant
family was Capitellidae, with 7,929 individuals sampled (representing
69% of all sampled polychaetes), 99% of which (N = 7,843) were
assigned to the Capitella genus. The second most abundant family
was Spionidae, which had dramatically fewer individuals (N = 466;
4% of total polychaetes sampled).