Environmental DNA (eDNA)-metabarcoding-based early monitoring and warning for invasive species in aquatic ecosystems

Abstract

Biological invasion is a major threat to multiple ecosystems across the globe, causing severe damages to ecological integrity, loss of biodiversity, economic and social development and even human health. With the rapid development in aquaculture, shipping and aquarium and ornamental trades in the past several decades, China has become one of the countries most influenced by invasive species. Studies have clearly shown that the development and application of robust early monitoring and warning is one of the most effective ways to prevent and possibly control invasive species in aquatic ecosystems. Compared to terrestrial ecosystems, there remain several technical difficulties for developing early monitoring and warning in aquatic habitats. The technical challenges are mainly due to several features of aquatic biological communities such as high biodiversity and complex structure, a large number of microscopic species, extremely low population density and lack of available taxonomic keys for species identification. With the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing techniques, environmental DNA (eDNA)-metabarcoding has become the top priority method for developing the early monitoring and warning programs in aquatic ecosystems. In this review, we aim to synthesize the research progress on eDNA-metabarcoding and its application to early monitoring and warning of invasive species in aquatic ecosystems. In addition, we briefly discuss the technological advantages of eDNA-metabarcoding for the early monitoring and warning •综述• © 492 生 物 多 样 性 Biodiversity Science 第 27 卷 综述 programs. Finally, we propose research perspectives for solutions to technical issues for false positive and false negative errors in the eDNA-metabarcoding process.

Risk Screening of Invasive Aquatic Species and a Survey of Fish Diversity Using Environmental DNA Metabarcoding Analysis in Shanghai

“…(3) Methodology impact Historical surveys often utilized traditional sampling methods, using tools such as gill nets, trawl nets, and traps. While these methods directly observe the targeted species, their sensitivity is relatively low [77]. In contrast, the eDNA metabarcoding analysis used in this survey has a relatively higher sensitivity [78,79] and is capable of detecting target organisms at low densities within complex biological communities [43].…”

Environmental DNA metabarcoding reveals fish diversity, community assembly and one invasive species prevalence in a National Park of Liaohe in September

“…Traditionally, biodiversity monitoring is based on morphology, usually limited to local scales and focused on limited biological groups (Baird and Hajibabaei, 2012;Cavaliere et al, 2021). Compared with terrestrial organisms, aquatic organisms have a wide variety of species and complex community structure, and many biological groups are characterized by small size, small population size at the initial stage of colonization, hidden underwater, and lack of external forms that can be used for species identification, which makes it more challenging at the technical level to build an early detection/monitoring and early warning system in aquatic ecosystems (Xiong et al, 2016;Li et al, 2019). As an emerging technology, environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding offers a non-invasive tools and was expected to provide qualitative and quantitative analysis of biological communities by detecting the short DNA fragments left in the environment by biological tissues, secretions, excreta, blood, and corpses (Doi et al, 2017;Minamoto et al, 2018;Itakura et al, 2019).…”