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Potential for DNA-based identification of Great Lakes fauna: Match and mismatch between taxa inventories and DNA barcode libraries
Citation:
Trebitz, A., J. Hoffman, G. Grant, T. Billehus, AND E. Pilgrim. Potential for DNA-based identification of Great Lakes fauna: Match and mismatch between taxa inventories and DNA barcode libraries. Scientific Reports. Nature Publishing Group, London, Uk, 5:1-11, (2015).
Impact/Purpose:
A necessary condition for assigning species identities to DNA sequences recovered from mixed-organism samples is the availability of DNA reference libraries having barcodes for all potential species. In this paper, we undertake the challenge of constructing comprehensive species inventories for all Great Lakes aquatic fauna and evaluating the availability of DNA barcodes for them. Notable findings include that a large percentage of Great Lakes aquatic invertebrates lack reference barcodes although barcodes are available for almost all vertebrates, and that a substantial percentage of Great Lakes invertebrates are not even resolved to species. This work has implications for the utility of DNA-based identification in the context of both biotic assessment and invasive species detection, and lays the groundwork for our own research efforts on invasive species detection strategies.
Description:
DNA-based identification of mixed-organism samples offers the potential to greatly reduce the need for resource-intensive morphological identification, which would be of value both to biotic condition assessment and non-native species early-detection monitoring. However, the ability to assign species identities to DNA sequences found within a mixed-organism sample is dependent on the availability of comprehensive DNA sequence libraries. Here, we compile inventories for aquatic metazoans presently found in or threatening to invade the Laurentian Great Lakes and examine the availability of mitochondrial COI DNA barcode libraries (as catalogued in the Barcode of Life Database) for these taxa. We found DNA barcode libraries to be fairly complete for extant Great Lakes vertebrates (100% of reptiles, 98% of fish, and 92% of amphibians had barcodes) and for species on “threatening to invade” lists (100% had barcodes). In contrast, DNA barcode libraries remain poorly developed for precisely those organisms where morphological identification is most challenging: 45% of extant invertebrates lacked barcodes, with rates especially high among rotifers, oligochaetes, and mites. Lack of species-level resolution to many Great Lakes invertebrates also is a barrier to matching DNA sequences with physical specimens. Attaining the potential for DNA-based identification requires a concerted effort to build supporting sequence libraries and voucher collections.
