River estuaries are dynamic and productive ecosystems with high regional biodiversity. Environmental DNA (eDNA) has become a useful approach to assessing biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems. This study was conducted to investigate fish community characteristics and species diversity in two river estuary ecosystems, the Taehwa River and Changwon Stream. We further compared conventional and eDNA metabarcoding analyses of the fish communities. The conventional survey was performed in May, July, and October 2022, while the eDNA analysis was conducted only in May. We observed various fish species with different life histories, including carp, goby, and marine fish. We also found that migratory fish, such as dace Tribolodon hakonensis, sweetfish Plecoglossus altivelis, and eel Auguilla japonica, occurred in the Taehwa River, suggesting high river connectivity. Marine fish species were predominant in the Changwon Stream, as this river is located close to the sea. The diversity indices showed that the Taehwa River generally had higher species richness, evenness, and diversity values than the Changwon Stream. A total of 9-19 species were detected in the conventional survey for the three sites, whereas 11-18 species were found from eDNA analysis. The findings indicate that the sensitivity of eDNA was similar to or higher than that of the conventional method. Our study findings suggest the efficiency and efficacy of eDNA-based fish community monitoring, although with some shortcomings in applying the genetic marker to Korean fish, including no clear-cut distinction for Korean endemic species and/or genetically closely related species groups.

Understanding the landscapes and the elements that make up the landscapes can help us understand the entire natural ecosystems and biodiversity. Landscape ecology has been studied since the past. however, many studies are conducted on single landscapes, and comparative studies between landscapes are few. We compared insect species diversity and community structure within a single plant community across landscapes and habitat. Additionally, identify environmental factors that affect diversity. Our results showed that above-ground and below-ground insect communities were clearly distinguished. Additionally, species diversity was high below-ground in all landscapes. Insect community structures across landscapes did not differ in above-ground. However, below-ground, the urban was differentiated from the forest and agricultural land. We identified the urbanization indices GMIS and PHBASE as factors responsible for these difference.

Riptortus pedestris has established symbiotic interactions with specific bacteria from soil environment in every generations. The soil environment is extremely heterogeneous with microbial diversity, suggesting that bacterial composition of the R. pedestris can be affected by surrounding environments. Therefore, we investigated spatiotemporal variation of bacterial communities in wild R. pedestris collected from five mainland areas and Jeju Island in South Korea across insect generations. Among the 390 R. pedestris adults collected, we detected a total of 28 bacterial genera from the symbiotic region of insects. Among the bacterial genera, genus Caballeronia bacteria was the most abundantly detected regardless of sampling site and generation. Nevertheless, bacterial richness varied among the insect generations with 10 genera detected in overwintered generation, 15 genera in the 1st generation and 18 genera in the 2nd generation. Moreover, we found five bacterial genera that were exclusively detected from the Jeju island compared to the mainland areas surveyed.

Although the abundance of Metapenaeus joyneri resources with high commercial value was recently confirmed in the outer waters of Gomso Bay, located between Buan-gun and Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do, Metapenaeus joyneri resources have not been efficiently utilized due to the absence of fishing gears and methods for a selective Metapenaeus joyneri capture. Therefore, in this study, we adopted shrimp dredge as a trial fishing gear for the Metapenaeus joyneri capture, and analyzed the species composition and cluster community structure of aquatic organisms caught by the shrimp dredge, from May to September 2021 at the coastal waters of Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do. During the experimental period, 28 types of marine species of 29,190 individuals and 250,136 g of total biomass were caught. Among them, the population of Metapenaeus joyneri, the target species, dominated by 80.7%, followed by Thrysa chefuensis with 7.1%, and Leiognathus nuchalis with 6.0%, confirming that the fishing ratio of Metapenaeus joyneri was the highest among all species.

In recent years, macroalgal bloom occurs frequently in coastal oceans worldwide. It might be attributed to accelerating climate change. “Green tide” events caused by proliferation of green macroalgae (Ulva spp.) not only damage the local economy, but also harm coastal environments. These nuisance events have become common across several coastal regions of continents. In Korea, green tide incidences are readily seen throughout the year along the coastlines of Jeju Island, particularly the northeastern coast, since the 2000s. Ulva species are notorious to be difficult for morphology-based species identification due to their high degrees of phenotypic plasticity. In this study, to investigate temporal variation in Ulva community structure on Jeju Island between 2015 and 2020, chloroplast barcode tuf A gene was sequenced and phylogenetically analyzed for 152 specimens from 24 sites. We found that Ulva ohnoi and Ulva pertusa known to be originated from subtropical regions were the most predominant all year round, suggesting that these two species contributed the most to local green tides in this region. While U. pertusa was relatively stable in frequency during 2015 to 2020, U. ohnoi increased 16% in frequency in 2020 (36.84%), which might be associated with rising sea surface temperature from which U. ohnoi could benefit. Two species (Ulva flexuosa, Ulva procera) of origins of Europe should be continuously monitored. The findings of this study provide valuable information and molecular genetic data of genus Ulva occurring in southern coasts of Korea, which will help mitigate negative influences of green tide events on Korea coast.

To assess the characteristics of meiofaunal community fluctuations related to environmental factors, seasonal surveys were conducted in the subtidal zone of Hallyeohaesang National Park. The average depth of the study area was about 20 m, and the average water temperature at the bottom was low in winter (11.33°C) and high in summer (17.95°C). The sedimentary particles mainly comprised silt and clay at most stations. The abundance of meiofauna ranged from 81.7 to 1,296.5 Inds. 10 cm-2, and the average abundance was 589.3 Inds. 10 cm-2. The average abundance of meiofauna in each season was the lowest at 416.5 Inds. 10 cm-2 in winter and the highest at 704.5 Inds. 10 cm-2 in spring. The dominant taxa were nematodes (about 92%) and harpacticoids (about 5%). In the cluster analysis of meiofaunal communities, they were divided into four significant groups. The largest group mainly contained spring and summer samples, and contained stations with a high nematode density of over 500 Inds. 10 cm-2 and harpacticoids below 50 Inds. 10 cm-2 with a high composition ratio of nematodes. In the cluster analysis, no regional division was found between the stations, and it was thought to be divided by the seasons with high abundance according to seasonal variation and the composition ratio of nematodes and harpacticoids. In the Spearman rank correlation analysis, the density of total meiofauna and the most dominant taxa, nematodes, was not significantly related to environmental factors. However, the density of harpacticoids had a significant positive correlation with water depth and a negative correlation with sediment particle size.