Conclusion

This study is one of few that have explored metabarcoding as a tool for surveying macroinvertebrate biodiversity in salt lake environments (Campbell et al. 2023; Saccò et al. 2025). It demonstrates that combining sugar‐flotation of dry lake sediments with DNA metabarcoding is an effective method for documenting macroinvertebrate biodiversity of ephemeral salt lakes. Although this study focused on one biotic community (aquatic macroinvertebrates) in a single lake with a limited number of sites and samples per site, the approach used here could be used to conduct biodiversity surveys of temporary lakes more broadly and focus on other organisms which produce resting stages or seed banks, e.g., rotifers or macrophytes. Utilising sugar‐flotation is critical, with our results clearly demonstrating that the sediment extraction protocol utilised here was ineffective for detecting aquatic macroinvertebrates. Increasing the initial mass of sediment had a substantial effect on the number and consistency of taxa detected, with sugar‐flotation of 1000 g recommended where feasible to detect as many aquatic macroinvertebrate taxa as possible within a site, and 250 g representing a practical minimum.