Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (Jul 2022)

Similarities and Differences in Fish Community Composition Accessed by Electrofishing, Gill Netting, Seining, Trawling, and Water eDNA Metabarcoding in Temperate Reservoirs

  • Amin Golpour,
  • Marek Šmejkal,
  • Martin Čech,
  • Rômulo A. dos Santos,
  • Allan T. Souza,
  • Tomáš Jůza,
  • Carlos Martínez,
  • Daniel Bartoň,
  • Mojmír Vašek,
  • Vladislav Draštík,
  • Tomáš Kolařík,
  • Luboš Kočvara,
  • Milan Říha,
  • Jiří Peterka,
  • Petr Blabolil,
  • Petr Blabolil

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2022.913279
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10

Abstract

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It is difficult to understand the composition and diversity of biological communities in complex and heterogeneous environments using traditional sampling methods. Recently, developments in environmental DNA metabarcoding have emerged as a powerful, non-invasive method for comprehensive community characterization and biodiversity monitoring in different types of aquatic ecosystems. In this study, water eDNA targeting fish (wf-eDNA) and four traditional fish sampling methods (electrofishing, gill netting, seining, trawling) were compared to evaluate the reliability and efficiency of wf-eDNA (vertebrate mitochondrial 12S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) as an alternative approach to assess the diversity and composition of freshwater fish communities. The results of wf-eDNA showed a consistency between the traditional sampling methods regarding species detection. However, some fish species detected using wf-eDNA assay were not detected using traditional sampling methods and vice versa. Comparison of wf-eDNA and traditional sampling methods revealed spatial homogeneity in fish community composition in all reservoirs. Ordination analysis showed that the wf-eDNA approach covers all traditional sampling methods and occupies an intermediate position. In addition, based on the Shannon diversity index, we found that in one reservoir the wf-eDNA method yielded similar fish community diversity to traditional sampling methods. However, in other reservoirs, the calculated Shannon diversity index of the wf-eDNA method was significantly higher than traditional sampling methods. In general, significant positive correlations were found between the wf-eDNA method and almost all traditional sampling methods. We conclude that wf-eDNA seems to be a reliable and complementary approach for biomonitoring and ecosystem management of freshwater ichthyofauna.

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