A noninvasive eDNA tool for detecting sea lamprey larvae in river sediments: Analytical validation and field testing in a low‐abundance ecosystem

• Autor(a) principal: Baltazar‐Soares, Miguel
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Pinder, Adrian C., Harrison, Andrew J., Oliver, Will, Picken, Jessica, Britton, J. Robert, Andreou, Demetra
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/8687
• topic: Biological conservation; Environmental DNA; Freshwater ecology; Monitoring; Sea lamprey

Anthropogenic activities are increasingly threatening aquatic biodiversity, especiallyanadromous species. Monitoring and conservation measures are thus required toprotect, maintain and restore imperilled populations. While many species can be sur-veyed using traditional capture and visual census techniques, species that use river-ine habitats in a less conspicuous manner, such as sea lampreyPetromyzon marinus,can be more challenging to monitor. Sea lamprey larvae (ammocoetes) can spend sev-eral years in freshwater burrowed within soft sediments, inhibiting their detectionand assessment. Here, we present a qPCR assay based on the detection of environ-mental DNA (eDNA) to identify the presence of ammocoetes burrowed in thesediment. We present an extensively validated method that ensured both species-specificity of the assay as well as the capacity to detect ammocoetes when abun-dances are low. Experiments on burrowing activity suggested that most of the DNAreleased into the sediment occurs during burrowing. Overall, we demonstrate thisnew molecular-based tool is an efficient and effective complement to traditionalmonitoring activities targeting larval stages of sea lampreys.