Detecting community change in Arctic marine ecosystems using the temporal dynamics of environmental DNA

Abstract Large‐scale biomonitoring of Arctic coastal marine communities is essential to track temporal changes in ecosystems. Despite the potential of environmental DNA (eDNA) as an innovative coastal biomonitoring tool, important questions remain pertaining to its temporal and spatial variation and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental DNA
Main Authors: Maelle Sevellec, Anaïs Lacoursière‐Roussel, Louis Bernatchez, Eric Normandeau, Eric Solomon, Andrew Arreak, LeeAnn Fishback, Kimberly Howland
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2021
Subjects:
Arctic
coastal marine community
eDNA
invertebrates
metabarcoding
metazoan
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Microbial ecology
QR100-130
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1002/edn3.155
https://doaj.org/article/1dcb193136bb4611b9f26e1a9c73175b
Description
Summary:Abstract Large‐scale biomonitoring of Arctic coastal marine communities is essential to track temporal changes in ecosystems. Despite the potential of environmental DNA (eDNA) as an innovative coastal biomonitoring tool, important questions remain pertaining to its temporal and spatial variation and how this may affect the evaluation of ecosystem changes over time in hydrodynamic ecosystems. In this study, we used eDNA metabarcoding of coastal water samples in two Canadian Arctic ports to evaluate the potential of eDNA to detect temporal transition in marine coastal communities. We sequenced eDNA from approximately 20 surface water samples collected each month (N ≈ 150 samples) covering the transition period between summer and late fall using four different universal primer pairs (two pairs of COI mitochondrial genes and two pairs of 18S rRNA genes). Our results from both primer pairs highlighted a significant transition from the summer to the fall marine community. We also observed a putative link between eDNA peaks of read abundance and timing for different life stages (e.g., spawning and larvae) of several species with the most abundant sequence reads. As such, our results show that temporal variation must be considered in ensuring comprehensive coastal biomonitoring with eDNA. Although much remains to be investigated about the ecology of eDNA, our results contribute to fundamental knowledge on the origin of eDNA and highlight the importance of considering temporal variation in developing guidance for coastal biomonitoring with this approach.

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