EARLY HEARING DETECTION AND INTERVENTION VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
MARCH 2-5, 2021

(Virtually the same conference, without elevators, airplane tickets, or hotel room keys)

5/22/2018 | 9:30 AM - 9:45 AM | DNA METABARCODING BASED STREAM ASSESSMENTS – WE’RE READY! | 420 B

DNA METABARCODING BASED STREAM ASSESSMENTS – WE’RE READY!

Accurate assessment of macrozoobenthic community composition is essential for stream health monitoring. In order to improve the accuracy of monitoring efforts we developed novel DNA metabarcoding methods and validated them using 18 monitoring samples of the Finnish government that were initially determined using larval morphology. Our metabarcoding pipeline showed improved species resolution compared to morphological identifications and on average detected 57% more taxa across samples. All four primer sets, that were specifically developed for freshwater macrozoobenthos, performed equally good. Furthermore, the stream assessment results of both approaches were very similar, despite the lack of precise abundance data for the DNA-based method. In addition to delivering highly reproducible data, we also developed bioinformatic methods to extract information on intraspecific diversity of the entire community. With laboratory costs of ~$250 per sample, metabarcoding has become a feasible method. Consequently, we scaled up our metabarcoding protocols to allow processing and sequencing of hundreds of samples within weeks. While DNA based assessment methods should be further refined (e.g. improved primers, PCR free mitogenomics), we argue that current metabarcoding protocols are already mature enough to be used for routine monitoring and water quality assessment.

Biodiversity
Genetics
New Methods

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Presenters/Authors

Vasco Elbrecht (), Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (University of Guelph), elbrecht@uoguelph.ca;