Development and assessment of environmental DNA (eDNA) for biomonitoring: an "omics" surrogate for an aquatic community assessment in Canada

Funding period: 2020-2024
Lead: Gerald Tetreault
Total GRDI funding: $206,500

This technology uses genetic material that aquatic organisms shed in their environment rather than morphology to identify species of interest. This non-invasive method does not require direct capture of organisms, identification, and release. This will minimize the time and cost of traditional logistically complex and resource intensive community assessments. These new methods will allow eDNA to be quantified relative to traditional biomonitoring techniques for freshwater fish and mussel communities without invasive sampling collections. This project seeks to compare the quantitative signal of eDNA abundance derived from targeted assays using qPCR against relative numbers of sequence reads for the same taxon using metabarcoding to assess methods relative to eDNA signal strength and sensitivity. Once developed, ECCC will share this technology with the local Indigenous communities via Community Based Monitoring (CBM) collaborations so they can build capacity to monitor their local environments. We intend to design and make kits to be used in CBM and Citizen Science community groups.