Does Size Matter? An Experimental Evaluation of the Relative Abundance and Decay Rates of Aquatic Environmental DNA

Environmental Science & Technology
Jonas BylemansRichard P Duncan

Abstract

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is increasingly used to monitor aquatic macrofauna. Typically, short mitochondrial DNA fragments are targeted because these should be relatively more abundant in the environment as longer fragments will break into smaller fragments over time. However, longer fragments may permit more flexible primer design and increase taxonomic resolution for eDNA metabarcoding analyses, and recent studies have shown that long mitochondrial eDNA fragments can be extracted from environmental water samples. Nuclear eDNA fragments have also been proposed as targets, but little is known about their persistence in the aquatic environment. Here we measure the abundance of mitochondrial eDNA fragments of different lengths and of short nuclear eDNA fragments, originating from captive fish in experimental tanks, and we test whether longer mitochondrial and short nuclear fragments decay faster than short mitochondrial fragments following fish removal. We show that when fish are present, shorter mitochondrial fragments are more abundant in water samples than both longer mitochondrial fragments and short nuclear eDNA fragments. However, the rate of decay following fish removal was similar for all fragment types, suggesting that th...Continue Reading

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Citations

Apr 13, 2019·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Mita E SenguptaBirgitte J Vennervald
Oct 24, 2019·Journal of Fish Biology·Anaïs Lacoursière-Roussel, Kristy Deiner
Nov 21, 2019·Proceedings. Biological Sciences·Jori B HarrisonSean M Rogers
Sep 6, 2020·Molecular Ecology·Joanne E LittlefairMelania E Cristescu
Sep 14, 2020·Molecular Ecology·Gentile Francesco FicetolaPierre Taberlet
Oct 15, 2019·PeerJ·Vasco ElbrechtDirk Steinke
Mar 28, 2019·Scientific Reports·A Trujillo-GonzálezK S Hutson
Feb 4, 2021·Scientific Reports·Nathaniel T MarshallSubba Rao Chaganti
May 19, 2021·Molecular Ecology Resources·Laetitia MathonStéphanie Manel
Jul 16, 2021·The Science of the Total Environment·Mohan AmarasiriKazunari Sei
Jul 12, 2018·Environmental Science & Technology·Arial J ShogrenDiogo Bolster
Jul 23, 2019·Environmental Science & Technology·Toshiaki JoToshifumi Minamoto
Dec 5, 2021·Molecular Ecology Resources·Sinziana F RiveraAgnès Bouchez

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