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Monitoring freshwater fish communities in large rivers using environmental DNA metabarcoding and a long‐term electrofishing survey
Author(s) -
Goutte Aurélie,
Molbert Noëlie,
Guérin Sabrina,
Richoux Robin,
Rocher Vincent
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of fish biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1095-8649
pISSN - 0022-1112
DOI - 10.1111/jfb.14383
Subject(s) - electrofishing , environmental dna , biology , relative species abundance , abundance (ecology) , species richness , ecology , freshwater fish , fishery , population , water framework directive , sampling (signal processing) , fish <actinopterygii> , biodiversity , water quality , demography , sociology , filter (signal processing) , computer science , computer vision
Monitoring freshwater fish communities in a large human‐impacted river is a challenging task. The structure of fish assemblages has been monitored yearly in the Marne and the Seine Rivers, across the Paris conurbation, France, using traditional electrofishing (EF) surveys since 1990, in accordance with the European Water Framework Directive. In addition, metabarcoding of DNA extracted from environmental samples (eDNA) was concomitantly conducted in nine sampling sites in 2017 and in 2018 to compare the estimates of species richness and relative abundance among three methods: annual, long‐term EF monitoring and eDNA. The present study confirms better detection of fish species using eDNA compared to annual EF. eDNA metabarcoding was also more efficient for species detection than a 3–6‐year EF survey but was similar or less efficient than a long‐term EF survey of 14 years of monitoring. In addition, the numbers of reads per species relative to the total number of reads significantly increased with (a) increasing relative abundance (relative percentage of individuals caught per species) and (b) increasing number of years that a fish species was detected during the 2000–2018 period. These results suggest that eDNA could reflect local population persistence.