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Pairing traditional biological assessment with DNA-based tools for AIS early-detection monitoring
Citation:
Trebitz, A., C. Hatzenbuhler, J. Hoffman, C. Meredith, Greg Peterson, J. Martinson, S. Okum, AND E. Pilgrim. Pairing traditional biological assessment with DNA-based tools for AIS early-detection monitoring. Upper Midwest Invasive Species Conference, Rochester, MN, October 15 - 18, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Understanding the utility of DNA-based tools for biological monitoring is a major goal of SSWR research area 3.01A-2.1. This presentation will synthesize data from across various sampling efforts to address questions related to these DNA-based tools. Data sets used in the analyses come from various ORD partnerships (e.g., with US-FWS, GLNPO) and will help inform aquatic invasive species early-detection monitoring efforts being conducted by multiple federal, state, and tribal entities.
Description:
Morphological identification of organisms collected with various types of nets and grab-samplers remains a big part of biological monitoring, but the capacity to apply DNA-based tools to such monitoring is steadily increasing. Options include extracting DNA from mixed-organism physical samples as well as recovering environmental DNA from water or sediments, and identifying organisms either by screening for individual species using target markers or characterizing whole communities by metabarcoding. In this presentation, we describe results from several projects that have paired traditional with DNA-based bioassessment data in the context of AIS assessments for Great Lakes macroinvertebrates or fish. Areas our comparisons explore include how spatial grain and extent vary in eDNA vs physical samples; how organism occurrence frequency and detection probability differs in metabarcoding vs. morphologically identified samples; and how the incorporation of DNA-based data contributes to our understanding of survey effectiveness and efficiency.