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Expanding Larval Fish DNA Metabarcoding to All the Great Lakes
Citation:
Pilgrim, E., S. Okum, J. Martinson, J. Hoffman, Greg Peterson, J. Lietz, AND C. Hatzenbuhler. Expanding Larval Fish DNA Metabarcoding to All the Great Lakes. Upper Midwest Invasive Species Conference, La Crosse, WI, October 16 - 19, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
Present the expansion of our DNA metabarcoding studies of larval fishes from a pilot program to monitoring multiple locations throughout the Great Lakes. Presentation will occur at the Upper Midwest Invasive Species Conference (La Crosse, WI, Oct 17-19).
Description:
Fish larvae represent a largely untapped community for detecting and monitoring breeding non-native species, mainly due to the difficulty of identifying larvae to species through morphological methods. Molecular genetic methods offer means to identify larval specimens to species through DNA metabarcoding and high-throughput DNA sequencing. Our pilot application of DNA metabarcoding to Great Lakes fish larvae in 2012 taught us several lessons for optimizing these genetic methods for monitoring invasive fish species. With extensive efforts from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, we expanded this work to include samples from other Great Lakes for 2014-2015. Here, we outline the initial results of this large scale Great Lakes larval fish monitoring work. We will cover the successes and challenges of Great Lakes-wide monitoring for larval fish and propose a path for creating a tool for end users and decision makers.
