Environmental DNA from seawater samples correlate with trawl catches of subarctic, deepwater fishes
Remote polar and deepwater fish faunas are under pressure from ongoing climate change and increasing fishing effort. However, these fish communities are difficult to monitor for logistic and financial reasons. Currently, monitoring of marine fishes largely relies on invasive techniques such as botto...
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ftgriffithuniv:oai:research-repository.griffith.edu.au:10072/172154 2023-05-15T16:27:47+02:00 Environmental DNA from seawater samples correlate with trawl catches of subarctic, deepwater fishes Thomsen, Philip Francis Moller, Peter Rask Sigsgaard, Eva Egelyng Knudsen, Steen Wilhelm Jorgensen, Ole Ankjaer Willerslev, Eske 2016 application/pdf http://hdl.handle.net/10072/172154 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165252 English eng Public Library of Sciences PLoS One https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2016 Thomsen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Population Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics Journal article 2016 ftgriffithuniv https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165252 2018-07-30T10:59:01Z Remote polar and deepwater fish faunas are under pressure from ongoing climate change and increasing fishing effort. However, these fish communities are difficult to monitor for logistic and financial reasons. Currently, monitoring of marine fishes largely relies on invasive techniques such as bottom trawling, and on official reporting of global catches, which can be unreliable. Thus, there is need for alternative and non-invasive techniques for qualitative and quantitative oceanic fish surveys. Here we report environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding of seawater samples from continental slope depths in Southwest Greenland. We collected seawater samples at depths of 188–918 m and compared seawater eDNA to catch data from trawling. We used Illumina sequencing of PCR products to demonstrate that eDNA reads show equivalence to fishing catch data obtained from trawling. Twenty-six families were found with both trawling and eDNA, while three families were found only with eDNA and two families were found only with trawling. Key commercial fish species for Greenland were the most abundant species in both eDNA reads and biomass catch, and interpolation of eDNA abundances between sampling sites showed good correspondence with catch sizes. Environmental DNA sequence reads from the fish assemblages correlated with biomass and abundance data obtained from trawling. Interestingly, the Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) showed high abundance of eDNA reads despite only a single specimen being caught, demonstrating the relevance of the eDNA approach for large species that can probably avoid bottom trawls in most cases. Quantitative detection of marine fish using eDNA remains to be tested further to ascertain whether this technique is able to yield credible results for routine application in fisheries. Nevertheless, our study demonstrates that eDNA reads can be used as a qualitative and quantitative proxy for marine fish assemblages in deepwater oceanic habitats. This relates directly to applied fisheries as well as to monitoring effects of ongoing climate change on marine biodiversity—especially in polar ecosystems. Full Text Article in Journal/Newspaper Greenland Somniosus microcephalus Subarctic Griffith University: Griffith Research Online Greenland PLOS ONE 11 11 e0165252 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Griffith University: Griffith Research Online |
op_collection_id |
ftgriffithuniv |
language |
English |
topic |
Population Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics |
spellingShingle |
Population Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics Thomsen, Philip Francis Moller, Peter Rask Sigsgaard, Eva Egelyng Knudsen, Steen Wilhelm Jorgensen, Ole Ankjaer Willerslev, Eske Environmental DNA from seawater samples correlate with trawl catches of subarctic, deepwater fishes |
topic_facet |
Population Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics |
description |
Remote polar and deepwater fish faunas are under pressure from ongoing climate change and increasing fishing effort. However, these fish communities are difficult to monitor for logistic and financial reasons. Currently, monitoring of marine fishes largely relies on invasive techniques such as bottom trawling, and on official reporting of global catches, which can be unreliable. Thus, there is need for alternative and non-invasive techniques for qualitative and quantitative oceanic fish surveys. Here we report environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding of seawater samples from continental slope depths in Southwest Greenland. We collected seawater samples at depths of 188–918 m and compared seawater eDNA to catch data from trawling. We used Illumina sequencing of PCR products to demonstrate that eDNA reads show equivalence to fishing catch data obtained from trawling. Twenty-six families were found with both trawling and eDNA, while three families were found only with eDNA and two families were found only with trawling. Key commercial fish species for Greenland were the most abundant species in both eDNA reads and biomass catch, and interpolation of eDNA abundances between sampling sites showed good correspondence with catch sizes. Environmental DNA sequence reads from the fish assemblages correlated with biomass and abundance data obtained from trawling. Interestingly, the Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus) showed high abundance of eDNA reads despite only a single specimen being caught, demonstrating the relevance of the eDNA approach for large species that can probably avoid bottom trawls in most cases. Quantitative detection of marine fish using eDNA remains to be tested further to ascertain whether this technique is able to yield credible results for routine application in fisheries. Nevertheless, our study demonstrates that eDNA reads can be used as a qualitative and quantitative proxy for marine fish assemblages in deepwater oceanic habitats. This relates directly to applied fisheries as well as to monitoring effects of ongoing climate change on marine biodiversity—especially in polar ecosystems. Full Text |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Thomsen, Philip Francis Moller, Peter Rask Sigsgaard, Eva Egelyng Knudsen, Steen Wilhelm Jorgensen, Ole Ankjaer Willerslev, Eske |
author_facet |
Thomsen, Philip Francis Moller, Peter Rask Sigsgaard, Eva Egelyng Knudsen, Steen Wilhelm Jorgensen, Ole Ankjaer Willerslev, Eske |
author_sort |
Thomsen, Philip Francis |
title |
Environmental DNA from seawater samples correlate with trawl catches of subarctic, deepwater fishes |
title_short |
Environmental DNA from seawater samples correlate with trawl catches of subarctic, deepwater fishes |
title_full |
Environmental DNA from seawater samples correlate with trawl catches of subarctic, deepwater fishes |
title_fullStr |
Environmental DNA from seawater samples correlate with trawl catches of subarctic, deepwater fishes |
title_full_unstemmed |
Environmental DNA from seawater samples correlate with trawl catches of subarctic, deepwater fishes |
title_sort |
environmental dna from seawater samples correlate with trawl catches of subarctic, deepwater fishes |
publisher |
Public Library of Sciences |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10072/172154 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165252 |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
Greenland Somniosus microcephalus Subarctic |
genre_facet |
Greenland Somniosus microcephalus Subarctic |
op_relation |
PLoS One |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2016 Thomsen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165252 |
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PLOS ONE |
container_volume |
11 |
container_issue |
11 |
container_start_page |
e0165252 |
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1766017297896439808 |