Presenter: Katrina West
Large-scale applications of eDNA metabarcoding in the marine environment (recently upwards of 100,000 km2) are producing vast datasets and revealing complex community compositions from coastal waters to oceanic atolls and the deep-sea.
However, are we merely scratching the surface of the eDNA data we can derive from the marine environment?
In this talk, I will discuss the state of eDNA, specifically, eDNA fragmentation and nucleotide damage in seawater, to improve understanding of the genetic material available. Based on a revised view of the nature of marine eDNA, I will outline strategies to maximise higher concentration and quality eDNA and facilitate reproducible long-range PCR and single cell sequencing approaches. I will compare recent developments in third-generation sequencing platforms and whether they can provide more informative eDNA data (e.g. through increased species discrimination, population-level information). Lastly, I will present recent results from whole ecosystem eDNA surveying in Australian marine parks and will seek to answer the question: how can we maximise the information gleaned from eDNA?