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Innovation Fund

Quantifying marine biodiversity using environmental DNA

We have developed an innovative way to detect species in the sea using environmental DNA (eDNA) extracted from water samples.

Project LeaderDurationBudget
Michael Knapp (University of Otago)October 2016 – August 2019$300,000

Overview

Measuring whether species are present in a region is important for developing efficient, ecosystem-based management of marine resources. Current methods to measure biodiversity are costly, labour-intensive, and rely on indicator species or sites. Consequently, they don’t always capture the complexity of marine ecosystems and their usefulness is limited. 

We have established and tested an innovative, high-throughput and cost-efficient way to quantify marine biodiversity using eDNA extracted from marine water samples. Our results show the power of this new tool. We were able to identify more groups of organisms than traditional monitoring methods at the same sites, and our data is highly habitat-specific.

Our study highlights the limitations of both traditional and eDNA monitoring. Traditional surveys are more likely to miss cryptic or rare organisms while eDNA data relies on genetic data available in reference databases. At this stage, we recommend the best way to measure marine biodiversity is to combine traditional and eDNA monitoring approaches.

To make our monitoring system user-friendly, we have established a process where the eDNA sequence data is translated into a list of the types of organisms present in a given seawater sample.

Our new approach significantly reduces the cost of marine biomonitoring. It may be of interest to a range of users.

Related News

Project proposal

591 KB | pdf

Location

Tools & Resources

This project has produced or contributed to:

Beyond biodiversity: Can environmental DNA (eDNA) cut it as a population genetics tool?
Academic publication
Adams CIM, Knapp M, Gemmell NJ, Jeunen G-J, Bunce M, Lamare MD and Taylor HR (2019) Genes 10(3), 192
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Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding reveals strong discrimination among diverse marine habitats connected by water movement
Academic publication
Jeunen G-J, Knapp M, Spencer HG, Lamare MD, Taylor HR, Stat M, Bunce M & Gemmell NJ (2018) Molecular Ecology Resources 19(2), 426-438
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Species-level biodiversity assessment using marine environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding requires protocol optimization and standardization
Academic publication
G-J Jeunen, MKnapp, HG Spencer, MD Lamare, HR Taylor, M Stat, M Bunce and NJ Gemmell (2019) Ecology and Evolution 9(3)
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Using eDNA to measure marine biodiversity
Presentation
Webinar presentation by Michael Knapp, March 2019 (28 mins + Q&A)
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Metadata catalogue: Quantifying marine biodiversity using eDNA project
Dataset
This project has produced 2 datasets. You can find out about these datasets through our metadata catalogue.  
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