| Deep ocean hydrothermal vent ecosystems face physical disturbances from naturally occurring volcanic and tectonic activities and are at increasing risk of mineral resource exploitation, raising concerns about the resilience of endemic biological communities. Following destructive events, efficient and rapidly applicable surveys of organisms are required to monitor the state, evolution and a possible return of these ecosystems to their original baseline status. In this study, we explored the environmental DNA (eDNA) approach as a tool (1) to assess biodiversity of benthic communities associated with deep-sea hard substrata and (2) tracked the recolonization dynamics of benthic invertebrate communities living on the Montségur edifice within the Lucky Strike... |
