Dr Sharon Appleyard1,4, Ms Safia Maher1,4, Mr John Pogonoski1,4, Dr Xin-Yi Chua2,3,4, Dr Ana Lara-Lopez5, Dr Stephen Bent5, Dr Annette McGrath5
1CSIRO National Research Collections Australia, Australian National Fish Collection, Hobart, Australia, 2CSIRO Data 61, Brisbane, Australia, 3QUT School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Brisbane, Australia, 4CSIRO Environomics Future Science Platform, Canberra, Australia, 5Integrated Marine Observing Systems, Hobart, Australia
Environmental DNA is utilised for biodiversity assessment across a range of environments with approaches moving beyond proof-of-concept, although interpretation of data in an ecological context is just beginning. Broad scale, fish specific community studies from open-ocean waters are also just emerging. Following collaborations with researchers at the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) and using standardised sampling (consisting of temporal and depth specific collections of two litre water samples filtered through 0.22μM Sterivex filters), we undertook fish eDNA analyses. Three ‘fish’ specific assays (2 × mtDNA COI + 1 × mtDNA 16S) and a metazoan assay (mtDNA COI) were deployed with tagged amplicon products run on an Illumina MiSeq platform.
Monthly water samples, coupled with contextual data (temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, chlorophyll) from open waters around North Stradbroke Island (Queensland) and Maria Island (Tasmania) enabled a year-long investigation into fish occurrences. By interrogating both BOLD and NCBI databases and scrutinising the validity of fish occurrences against the Australian Faunal Directory, we examined the drivers for observed fish taxa at the sub-tropical and temperate IMOS National Reference Stations. Of the > 105 fish taxa detected, several (e.g. Trachurus spp., Lepidotrigla spp., Platycephalus spp.) were observed at both stations throughout the year, whereas the detection of other taxa was patchier and location specific (e.g. Morwong fuscus at NSI; Cyttus australis at MAI). Based on our findings, we present future management relevant applications that should be considered for eDNA monitoring of fish biodiversity in the open marine environment.
Biography:
Dr Sharon Appleyard is a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO, working in the Australian National Fish Collection in Hobart. Sharon is a molecular geneticist, with interests and expertise in genetic barcoding of marine taxa, population genetic and genomic diversity studies of marine fishes and sharks, including threatened, endangered and protected species and more recently in eDNA analyses for fish detection and metabarcoding of fish larvae and eggs.