eDNA; Metabarcoding Approach for Fish Biodiversity Assessment in Freshwater Ecosystem

The precise knowledge of species distribution is a key step in conservation biology. However, species detection can be extremely difficult in many environments, at specific life stages and in populations at very low densities. In recent years the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) has been proposed in order to overcome the limits of classical survey approaches. The majority of eDNA studies were based on the analysis of the environmental DNA with species-specific primers for the detection of a target species. However, when several species should be detected, eDNA metabarcoding approach is applicable. In this method eDNA is amplified with universal primers for a group of target species (e.g. amphibians, fishes, crustaceans, plants, etc.) and subsequently sequenced using Next-Generation Sequencing systems. The sequences obtained are compared with a reference database in order to obtain the list of species present in the sample. In this presentation, I will show several examples of the eDNA metabarcoding approach for different groups of species and in different environments and I will focus on its application for fish biodiversity assessment.