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).