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General Marine Environmental Science
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Development of an eDNA method for monitoring fish communities: ground truthing in diverse lakes with characterised fish faunas
P-GS-04-S
Jianlong Li* , University of Hull
Tristan W. Hatton-Ellis, Natural Resources Wales
Lori-Jayne Lawson Handley, University of Hull
Helen S. Kimbell, University of Hull
Marco Benucci, University of Hull
Graeme Peirson, Environment Agency,UK
Bernd Hänfling, University of Hull
Jianlong Li,
Presenter Email: haikuilee@gmail.com |
| Accurate, cost-effective monitoring of fish is required to assess the quality of lakes under the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). Recent studies have shown that eDNA metabarcoding is an effective and non-invasive method, which can provide semi-quantitative information on fish communities in large lakes. This study further investigated the potential of eDNA metabarcoding as a tool for WFD status assessment by collecting and analysing water samples from eight Welsh lakes and six meres in Cheshire, England, with well described fish faunas. Water samples (N = 252) were assayed using two mitochondrial DNA regions (Cytb and 12S rRNA). eDNA sampling indicated very similar species to be present in the lakes compared to those expected on the basis of existing and historical information. In total, 24 species with 111 species occurrences by lake were detected using eDNA. Secondly, there was a significant positive correlation between expected faunas and eDNA data in terms of confidence of species occurrence. Thirdly, eDNA data can estimate relative abundance with the standard five-level classification scale (DAFOR). Lastly, four ecological fish communities were characterised using eDNA data which were agreed with the pre-defined lake types according to environmental characteristics.This study provides further evidence that eDNA metabarcoding could be a powerful and non-invasive monitoring tool for WFD purpose in a wide range of lake types, considerably outperforming other methods for community level analysis.
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