Lake Albert Plankton Biodiversity from eDNA Metabarcoding at Three Sites

Miki Balint's dataset contains environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding data from Lake Albert, one of Africa's Great Lakes. The data, last updated in April 2026, assesses eukaryotic and metazoan plankton communities from surface water samples collected at three sites: the Semliki River inflow, the central lake, and the White Nile inflow/outflow.

Use Cases

• Analyze plankton community composition differences between lake sites based on the described environmental gradients.
• Study the dominance of cyclopoid copepods in pelagic communities based on the taxonomic assignments from the eDNA data.
• Investigate the relationship between distance from shore and community composition based on described nutrient and oxygen availability assumptions.
• Assess the limitations of eDNA metabarcoding for tropical biodiversity studies based on the described lack of reference sequence data.

Strengths

• Data is focused on a specific, important freshwater ecosystem (Lake Albert).
• Samples were collected along environmental gradients at three distinct sites, allowing for spatial comparison.
• Dataset is openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0.

Limitations

• The description notes a major limitation: a lack of reference sequence data limited accurate taxonomic assignments.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

figshare, author Miki Balint.

Collection Method

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding from surface water samples.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-13 11:54:18; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Lake Albert, Africa. Samples from the Semliki River inflow, central lake, and White Nile inflow/outflow.