Furlan EM

Sussex Bay, on the south coast of the UK, is an ideal site to test these biomonitoring methods. Historically, the coast of Sussex harboured dense kelp beds, which provided shelter and nursery grounds for many species while also protecting the coastlines from storm damage and sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere. However, the “Great Storm” of 1987 damaged these kelp ecosystems.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Xiaoyou Hong conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft. Kaikuo Wang conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Primer development CO1 species-specific primers were developed (Table 2) after amplifying tissue from each target species. Primers used to amplify the marker were mlCOIintF (5′-GGWACWGG WTGAACWGTWTAYCCYCC-3′) forward primer and jgHCO2198 (5′-TAIACYTCIGGRTGICCRAARAAYCA-3′) reverse primer to target a 313 bp region of the CO1 marker (Geller et al., 2013; Leray et al., 2013).