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A comparison of fish assemblages estimated from eDNA and electrofishing at NRSA wadeable streams.
Citation:
Reynolds, L. AND E. Pilgrim. A comparison of fish assemblages estimated from eDNA and electrofishing at NRSA wadeable streams. 2021 Association of Mid-Atlantic Aquatic Biologists Workshop Virtual Meeting, Virtual, March 31 - April 01, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this work is to test the efficacy of fish eDNA against traditional steam sampling methods.
Description:
Presence and relative abundance of common fish species in an assemblage can be estimated by electrofishing wadeable streams and is the primary sampling method used in the National Rivers and Streams Survey. Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a molecular genetic technique that can be used to identify species from water samples. eDNA sampling might supplant or supplement electrofishing, particularly to identify the presence of rare species at a site, if not caught in the electrofishing sample. Federal agencies, states, tribes, and river basin commissions will all benefit if fish assemblage metrics can be derived from a sample of water. Sample density can increase and will facilitate better spatial analysis of fish data. This data may be used in aquatic life use assessments, invasive species risk assessments, and distribution studies of threatened and endangered species. There remains, however, much work to evaluate eDNA as a fish assemblage sampling tool. We compared electrofishing samples at MidAtlantic wadeable NRSA sites in 2018-2019 with eDNA extracted from a single 1L water sample at the sites using next generation DNA sequencing (NGS) from two gene loci - 12S and 16S.
