Mr Jarred Moreno1, Dr Nicola Jackson1, Miss Jennifer Bruyn1, Dr Abigail Shaughnessy1, Dr Celine H. Frere1
1The University Of Queensland, , Australia
Biography:
Hi all! I am Jarred, a final year PhD student at the University of Queensland. I have largely framed my thesis around developing and optimising various methodological aspects for airborne environmental DNA filtering. I strongly believe that for this technology to become mainstream, and to be adopted by industry, that we need to understand the most basic aspects of utilising this technology. My aim for my thesis is to not only provide an understanding of the core methodologies for airDNA filtering, but also to begin to find where airDNA analysis may fit alongside the existing catalogue of biomonitoring tools.
Abstract:
Passive airDNA filtering is emerging as a valuable, non-invasive tool for biodiversity monitoring and holds the potential for understanding community structure and species distribution within a distinct temporal window. However, building confidence in this relatively novel technology and its effective application and uptake in terrestrial settings requires a fundamental understanding of how filters should be deployed to reliably capture airborne DNA from the target community. Here, we sought to understand the influence of the number and spatial placement of filters on the recovery of a complete vertebrate community catalogue of a study area. We deployed and sequenced 232 airDNA filters on a 500m grid across the Hidden Vale Nature Reserve in South-East Queensland. This site offers a unique opportunity to test airDNA with a known catalogue of species in areas where humans co-occur, areas of farmland, as well as more natural environments. We virtually subsampled this grid to several unique sampling designs (500m, 1000m, 1500m and 2000m grid; every second, third and fourth filter) to observe the influence of deployment design on the detection of terrestrial vertebrate species from a single airDNA sampling event. Specifically, we find that every second filter produced an almost identical accumulation curve, suggesting that we can almost halve our filtering effort to recover a similar species assemblage, for those species occurring on at least two filters. We concluded that ecological characteristics and the spatial placement of airDNA filters appear to play less of a role in the recovery of species than the number of filters.