eDNAmap: A Metabarcoding Web Tool for Comparing Marine Biodiversity, With Special Reference to Teleost Fish

Marine environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding data are beginning to accumulate, even for remote and poorly studied areas, such as marine environments. These data enable us to identify distributions of target organisms and then to compare biological compositions between different marine areas. However, there is no platform to effectively utilise and accumulate these data. In this study, we developed eDNAmap, a web-based platform designed to analyse and store marine eDNA metabarcoding data. By uploading species or sequence composition data with location information, eDNAmap users can automatically (1) plot sampling locations on a map, (2) generate a heatmap to evaluate potential batch effects arising from methodological differences and (3) perform nonmetric multidimensional scaling and cluster analyses using similarity indices. Furthermore, users can specify scientific names to display species distributions and upload species lists to assess species compositions of the target sea area. As an example, fish sequence composition data obtained from 55 stations around the Watase line-believed to exist along a geographic canyon known as the Tokara Gap-were used to verify its existence using eDNAmap. The platform includes a database primarily consisting of teleost fish data from the Northwestern Pacific, which users can analyse similarly to their own uploads. Although originally designed for fish, eDNAmap is flexible enough to handle data from other marine organisms. Analysing multiple taxa enables the detection of concordant biogeographic patterns across different groups, which can strengthen ecological interpretations and lay the groundwork for identifying environmental drivers shaping community structures. eDNAmap is available at https://github.com/jun-inoue/eDNAmap.