eDNA and the fight against invasive non-native species (INNS)
Invasive non-native species (INNS) are one of leading causes of biodiversity loss worldwide and there is a demand for more...
Biodiversity assessments enable industries to understand their impact on the environment and how they can minimise and mitigate this effect. For water companies this has meant having to build environmental considerations into their plans, to protect and improve the ecological status of freshwater ecosystems.
Carrying out biodiversity assessments can be labour intensive and the resource available for this monitoring is limited. There is therefore growing demand for the development of more efficient monitoring methods. One method that has gained significant traction in recent years is environmental DNA, or eDNA.
eDNA is a non-invasive ecological monitoring technique that is very sensitive meaning that it may allow the detection of species at lower population densities. Many questions, however, regarding the reliability of this relatively novel method remain, particularly for non-specialist end-users of the technology.
Written by APEM Group scientists Dr Jo James (Principal Freshwater Scientist), Dr Emily Moore (Senior Water Quality Scientist) and Dr Paul Stebbing (Associate Director, INNS) and collaborators from Yorkshire Water the paper ‘The use of environmental DNA for biodiversity monitoring in lentic and lotic ecosystems’, investigates the use of commercially-available eDNA assays for monitoring freshwater fish and invertebrates compared to conventional techniques.
The results show that the comparability between eDNA and conventional monitoring methods was taxa specific. For fish all species detected by electrofishing were confirmed by eDNA and additional species were detected by eDNA alone. For aquatic macroinvertebrates, several species were only detected through kick-sampling, and the number of families detected by eDNA was lower at all sites.
As an additional line of investigation, eDNA samples were collected from different habitats (lotic and lentic), on varying spatial scales and using multiple sampling regimes (different numbers of subsamples collected). eDNA results varied significantly between sampling locations within lentic sites and, for lotic sites, with the number of subsamples collected.
This study demonstrates the need for bespoke protocols when collecting eDNA samples. It also improves understanding of using eDNA for detecting aquatic taxa that could inform species surveillance protocols. These are essential if eDNA is to be used by practitioners as a regulatory monitoring tool. The generation and sharing of these results will enable practitioners to optimise survey design in the future.
Further reading
Full source article: The use of environmental DNA for biodiversity monitoring in lentic and lotic ecosystems
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