DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.12801455
title: Metabarcoding data (number of reads per operational taxonomic unit) from a monitoring study of sandy beach meiofauna before and after sand nourishment (Ahrenshoop, Baltic Sea)

description: We provide metabarcoding data (number of reads per operational taxonomic unit, OTU) determined from sediment samples collected on the sandy-beach water line of Ahrenshoop (Baltic Sea). Five sampling stations lay within the zone impacted by the sand nourishment between the boundary of the nature reserve in the north east and a site just north of the breakwater (AH01–AH05). An unaffected reference station was located south of Ahrenshoop (close to Niehagen) at the end of the road Pappelallee (PAP). Samples were collected at four dates. The first sampling was carried out before the sand nourishment took place (T0: 14 and 16 September 2021). Three samplings were realised after the impact: T1 (23 March 2022), T2 (27 September 2022), and T3 (28 March 2023). Latitude and longitude of each sampling location per station were recorded at each sampling date using a hand-held GPS application on a mobile phone. At the stations sampling locations varied over time. Prior to the sand nourishment the beach was narrow due to sand erosion in previous years. After the nourishment the additional extent of the beach was approximately 40 m at sampling date T1. Subsequently, progressive sand erosion forced the sampling locations (situated at the water line) further inland at T2 and T3.Samples were taken from the beach-water interface (water line) in the middle of the area between two groynes. Plexiglass cores (inner core diameter 5.4 cm) were inserted vertically into the sediment down to 15 cm depth. Each core was sliced in 5 cm-layers (0–5, 5–10 and 10–15 cm). Sediment horizons were preserved in 96–99% ethanol. Three cores (2 cores at T0) per sampling date were taken for metabarcoding analyses. The organisms were extracted by decantation over a 32-μm sieve. Genomic DNA was extracted from the filters using the DNeasy PowerSoil pro kit (Qiagen). Realtime-PCR was performed to amplify V1&V2, two hypervariable regions of 18S rDNA gene. The sequencing run was performed using the MiSeq Reagent Nanokit v2 (250 cycles paired end) on an Illumina MiSeq platform at the DZMB Metabarcoding lab in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. High-resolution amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) were obtained and compared to the NCBI database to assign taxonomic information to each ASV. The target meiofauna ASVs were further classified into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with a 3% cut-off threshold using the statistical software R.

Here, we present two Tables (as xlsx and tab-delimited files):(1) the taxonomic description of the 843 OTUs and their assigned ID number;(2) the number of reads per OTU per sample (including metadata for each sample: event; date; latitude; longitude; station, core and sample ID; sediment depth).

The metabarcoding data are part of a larger ecological study on the influence of sand nourishment on meiofauna communities, which included grain-size and meiofauna abundances (see “related works”).

Comment: Our study is related to but not funded by the project ECAS Baltic: Strategies of ecosystem-friendly coastal protection and ecosystem-supporting coastal adaptation for the German Baltic Sea Coast https://deutsche-kuestenforschung.de/ecas-baltic.html