Dr Geoffrey Collins1,2, Professor Damien Burrows2, Dr Shannon Kjeldsen2, Dr Cecilia Villacorta-Rath2
1OzFish Unlimited, Townsville, Australia, 2Centre for Tropical Water and Aquatic Ecosystem Research (TropWATER), James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
Biography:
Professor Burrows has been Director of TropWATER for 13 years. He specialises in freshwater, estuarine and coastal aquatic ecosystems and catchment management and has >30 years research experience in the tropics. His work has encompassed the ecology of wetlands, water quality, biological control of weeds, the ecology of fish and invertebrates, grazing management in riparian ecosystems, wetland management in cropping catchments, planning for water resource developments, fisheries management, and catchment planning and management. His work has had a particular emphasis on applied aspects of environmental management. This has involved extensive work with industry, community and government from grassroots to policy level.
He has for the last 13 years focused on developing the coastal and marine ecosystems side of TropWATER, especially mangrove, seagrass and estuarine habitats. In addition to being TropWATER Director, since 2015, he has also been the Hub leader for the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Tropical Water Quality Hub, which focused on research to improve water quality of the Great Barrier Reef. He has recently been appointed co-Hub Leader for the new NESP Marine and Coastal Hub (2021-2027) which encompasses applied research for all marine and coastal issues for Australia. He is a member of the Independent Expert Panel which advises state and federal Environment Ministers on science matters relating to the Great Barrier Reef.
Abstract:
Assessing aquatic biodiversity in remote waterways using traditional fish sampling methods is expensive, time-consuming and in tropical waters, potentially dangerous (e.g. crocodiles). We trialled citizen-science approaches for assessing fish species richness in waterways across tropical Queensland, Australia. Volunteers from the CreekWatch program collected eDNA samples at 12 sites, during wet and dry season. We averaged four volunteers and 24h of volunteer time for each sampling time and location. Volunteers’ level of understanding of eDNA and the potential application of this technique to environmental monitoring varied considerably, but were generally low, though expectation was high. Two universal assays amplifying the 16S and COI gene regions were used to characterize fish richness. A literature search identified 106 fish species to be likely present in the catchments sampled, including 97 native species and 9 invasive species. Although eDNA metabarcoding data revealed overlap with the species found in the literature search, incompleteness of the reference database was a significant limitation with some common species not being identified, and for several expected species, closely related species were detected instead. The eDNA results had to be carefully reviewed by fish experts to resolve many discrepancies. The requirement for professional interpretation of the results could limit community acceptance of this approach as a standard sampling methodology. Improving the accuracy of this approach, through improving the reference database, will allow citizen-scientists to not only collect the data but to understand and interpret it as well, leading to greater community confidence of eDNA approaches.