Data from: High-throughput sequencing of nematode communities from total soil DNA extractions

Background: Nematodes are extremely diverse and numbers of species are predicted to be more than a million. Studies on nematode diversity are difficult and laborious using standard methods such as identification based on morphology and therefore high-throughput sequencing is an attractive alternative. Generally, primers that have been used for generating amplicons for sequencing are not nematode specific and also amplify other groups such as fungi and plantae. Thus a nematode enrichment step must be included that may introduce biases. Results: An amplification strategy, including a new primer, which selectively amplifies nematodes and other metazoans was developed. When this strategy was tested on DNA templates from a set of 22 agricultural soils, we obtained 64.4 % sequences of nematode origin in total, whereas the remaining sequences were almost entirely metazoan. The nematode sequences were derived from a broad taxonomic range and most sequences were from nematode taxa that have previously been found to be abundant in soil such as Tylenchida, Rhabditida, Dorylaimida, Triplonchida and Araeolaimida. Conclusions: This amplification and sequencing strategy for assessing nematode diversity was demonstrated to be able to collect a broad taxonomy of nematodes without prior enrichment and thus the method will be highly valuable in ecological studies of nematodes. Keywords: nematode, community, next-generation sequencing, SSU, diversity, 18S, rDNA