eDNA metabarcoding bioassessment of endangered fairy shrimp ( Branchinecta spp.)
- PDF / 847,388 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 76 Downloads / 184 Views
METHODS AND RESOURCES ARTICLE
eDNA metabarcoding bioassessment of endangered fairy shrimp (Branchinecta spp.) Zachary Gold1 · Adam R. Wall2 · Emily E. Curd1 · Ryan P. Kelly3 · N. Dean Pentcheff2 · Lee Ripma4 · Paul H. Barber1 · Regina Wetzer2 Received: 17 March 2020 / Accepted: 20 July 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Habitat degradation and land-use change severely threaten the survival of fairy shrimp and the vernal pools in which they live. Limiting effective fairy shrimp conservation management efforts is the ability to readily identify species without the capture and sacrifice of individuals for microscopy. Here we demonstrate that eDNA metabarcoding is an effective non-invasive tool for monitoring fairy shrimp. Results from ten Southern California vernal pools comparing eDNA and traditional dipnet methods showed that eDNA metabarcoding with 16S rDNA provides exceptional species-level resolution. Importantly, while the two methods were concordant during early hydroperiods where adults were present, eDNA detected fairy shrimp for up to 2 months after dip-nets failed to detect any adults, expanding the time period for vernal pool monitoring. Together, these results provide resource managers a simple, cost-effective, and non-invasive method for biomonitoring endangered fairy shrimp species. Keywords Vernal pools · Conservation · Monitoring · Endangered species · Environmental DNA · eDNA
Introduction Fairy shrimp (Crustacea: Malacostraca: Anostraca) occur in ephemeral vernal pool habitats worldwide providing critical ecosystem function as the primary food source for migratory birds and other aquatic species (Keeley and Zedler 1998; Zedler 2003). However, fairy shrimp are increasingly threatened as fragile vernal pool ecosystems are lost to habitat degradation from urban development and agriculture Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12686-020-01161-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Zachary Gold [email protected] 1
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90005, USA
2
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA
3
School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA
4
Department of Biology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA
(Bauder and McMillan 1998; King 1998; Zacharias and Zamparas 2010; Simovich et al. 2013). Vernal pool loss is pronounced in highly modified ecosystems such as California where 95% of original coastal vernal pool habitat has been lost (Bauder and McMillan 1998). As a result, in California alone, four Branchinecta fairy shrimp species are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Three Endangered species (Branchinecta conservatio Eng et al. 1990, B. longiantenna Eng et al. 1990, and B. sandiegonensis Fugate, 1993) and one Threatened species (B. lynchi Eng et al. 1990) are actively managed for their conservation (Eng et al. 1990; Fugate 1
Data Loading...
