Assessing the effect of chromium pollution on benthic foraminiferal community: morphological vs. environmental metabarcoding approaches

The purpose of this experimental study is to assess the impact of different concentrations of chromium (Cr) through time on the diversity of cultured benthic foraminifera combining two morphological approaches for the identification of living specimens that are Rose Bengal (RB) staining and CellTracker Green (CTG) labelling as well as environmental DNA and RNA metabarcoding. Seven tanks/aquaria with different concentrations of Cr in water, namely 100 ppt, 1 ppb, 10 ppb, 100 ppb, 1 ppm and 10 ppm plus the control were used. A mesocosm was extracted from each tank at pre-established time (1 week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks 6 weeks and 8 weeks). Morphological analyses produced 6 datasets based on staini…