Discussion
This paper addresses, for the first time, the possibilities and limitations of rapid assessment of genetic variability among abundant marine species using a standardized COI metabarcode under the experimental conditions. In addition, using the data retrieved from GenBank we examined the extent to which the number of detectable populations (clusters) changes during the shift from the COI barcode to metabarcode.
Table 3. The OTUs found with the local reference database, indicating the number of reads