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Sensitivity and accuracy of DNA based methods used to describe aquatic communities for early detection of invasive fish species
Citation:
Hatzenbuhler, C., J. Kelly, E. Pilgrim, S. Okum, AND J. Martinson. Sensitivity and accuracy of DNA based methods used to describe aquatic communities for early detection of invasive fish species. Minnesota Society of the American Fisheries Society, Duluth, MN, February 01 - 03, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
not applicable
Description:
For biomonitoring efforts aimed at early detection of aquatic invasive species (AIS), the ability to detect rare individuals is key and requires accurate species level identification to maintain a low occurrence probability of non-detection errors (failure to detect a present species). Given the costs associated with traditional taxonomic identification of many aquatic organisms, technological advances in DNA sequencing technology, specifically, high-throughput metabarcoding has gained recognition as an alternative means to describe biodiversity in aquatic community samples. Although DNA based method development is progressing, our understanding of the limits to detection for metabarcoding complex samples is inadequate. Here we carried out several experiments designed to investigate the sensitivity and accuracy of metabarcoding methods commonly used to characterize sample composition. Metabarcoded samples were constructed using larval fish tissue from several “common” species and spiked with varying proportions of tissue from an additional “rare” target species. Our main findings provided convincing experimental evidence that we can detect species with biomass percentages as low as 0.02% - 1% of total sample mass. However, we identified several sources within the metabarcoding workflow that can increase the rate of non-detection errors by skewing DNA based biodiversity estimates from corresponding relative biomass abundances.