Environmental DNA metabarcoding for temporal biodiversity assessment of remote north-west Western Australia marine environments

Priscila Goncalves¹, Madalyn Cooper¹, Laurence Dugal^2,3, Luke Thomas^2,3, Sebastian Rauschert¹, Jessica Pearce¹, Shannon Corrigan¹, Eric Raes¹, Marcelle Ayad¹, Philipp Bayer¹, Michaela Dommisse¹, Julie Robidart¹, Steve Burnell¹

¹ The Minderoo Foundation, Perth 6000, WA.

² Australian Institute of Marine Science, Crawley 6009, WA.

³ The UWA Oceans Institute, The University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009, WA.

Effective management and conservation strategies for our oceans require a massive increase in the volume of information on marine wildlife. Minderoo Foundation’s OceanOmics program aims to support and scale ocean conservation efforts by developing and applying comprehensive genomic tools that together allow for rapid and accurate characterisation of marine biodiversity. Shallow coral reef environments of north-west Western Australia have been exposed to several marine heatwave events due to La Niña weather patterns, which cause devastating impacts on marine wildlife. This work aimed to establish a baseline of biological diversity for the coral reef systems of the Rowley Shoals atolls over space and time using eDNA, and investigate how coral reef fish assemblages change with fluctuations in seawater temperature. Using a multi-gene eDNA metabarcoding approach, bony fish and shark community composition was characterised when the seawater temperature was at its highest and lowest annual points. Results from three independent sampling events reveal similarities in the overall fish community structure of the three atolls, with habitat (primarily) and sea surface temperature (secondarily) driving fish distributions. Access to historical samples from the same area and continued sampling in the upcoming years will enable a temporal eDNA-based biomonitoring assessment for these highly diverse, threatened environments. With increasing frequency of heatwave events and ocean warming, eDNA represents a powerful tool to measure and track changes in marine biodiversity in response to environmental disturbances.

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