Integrated monitoring of the environment and its inhabitants is important to detect trends in ecological health, changes in status of rare/endangered organisms and early detection of invasive species. eDNA metabarcoding analysis offers a powerful and scalable solution for whole ecosystem monitoring, but many eDNA studies still rely on one or a few assays which can introduce taxonomic bias and miss ecologically-important groups.
Over the past four years, Wilderlab has worked closely with key partners and end users including local and central government agencies (NZ Regional Councils, Department of Conservation, NZ EPA), environmental consultants, primary sector partners, iwi, hapū, and other community groups to develop an assay panel and high-throughput laboratory workflow suited to most routine freshwater biodiversity applications. Wilderlab’s comprehensive freshwater monitoring panel includes 13 short-amplicon metabarcoding assays comprising both existing and novel primer sets that target mitochondrial, plastid and nuclear markers to detect a wide range of organisms including bacteria, microeukaryotes, fungi, plants, invertebrates and vertebrates. Included in these are ecologically and culturally important taxa such as piharau (lamprey), non-migratory galaxiids, tuna (eels), kōura (freshwater crayfish) and kākahi (freshwater mussels). Also in scope are invasive organisms such as hornwort (Ceratophyllum), koi carp (Cyprinus), and the ‘rock-snot’ diatom Didymosiphaena. In this talk I’ll be discussing the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ of our journey, including key learnings and examples of how ‘casting a wider-net’ can continue to contribute to better environmental outcomes into the future.