Amazing Discoveries of Benthic Fauna from the Abyssal Zone of Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal is a natural laboratory for the study of species diversity and evolution, as a unique freshwater ecosystem meeting the all of the main criteria of the World Heritage Convention. However, despite many years of research, the true biodiversity of the lake is clearly insufficiently studied,...

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Published in:Biology (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2021-09, Vol.10 (10), p.972
Main Authors: Kondratov, Ilya G., Sitnikova, Tatiana Ya, Kaygorodova, Irina A., Denikina, Natalia N., Annenkov, Vadim V., Khanaev, Igor V., Kirilchik, Sergei V., Nebesnykh, Ivan A., Dzyuba, Elena V.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abyssal zone
Aquatic organisms
Benthos
Biodiversity
bryozoans
Cocoons
cocoons of leeches
COI mtDNA sequences
Cytochrome
Eggs
eggs of gastropods
Evolution
Freshwater ecosystems
Genetic analysis
Genomes
Laboratories
Lake Baikal
Maximum likelihood method
Mitochondria
Mollusks
Morphology
New species
Packaging materials
Phylogenetics
Plastic debris
Polyethylene
Scanning electron microscopy
Sessile species
Species diversity
stramenopiles
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Summary:Lake Baikal is a natural laboratory for the study of species diversity and evolution, as a unique freshwater ecosystem meeting the all of the main criteria of the World Heritage Convention. However, despite many years of research, the true biodiversity of the lake is clearly insufficiently studied, especially that of deep-water benthic sessile organisms. For the first time, plastic waste was raised from depths of 110 to 190 m of Lake Baikal. The aim of this study was to examine the biological community inhabiting the plastic substrate using morphological and molecular genetic analysis. Fragments of plastic packaging materials were densely populated: bryozoans, leeches and their cocoons, capsules of gastropod eggs, and turbellaria cocoons were found. All the data obtained as a result of an analysis of the nucleotide sequences of the standard bar-coding fragment of the mitochondrial genome turned out to be unique. Our results demonstrate the prospects for conducting comprehensive studies of artificial substrates to determine the true biodiversity of benthos in the abyssal zone of Lake Baikal.
ISSN:2079-7737
2079-7737
DOI:10.3390/biology10100972