Beyond Species Richness: A Statistically Rigorous Comparison of eDNA and Conventional Fish Sampling Methods.

ABSTRACT: The comparative performance of different fish sampling methods remains unclear due to a lack of statistically rigorous comparisons. This issue has been exacerbated in recent years due to environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding becoming increasingly popular. However, limited research has compared multiple conventional methods simultaneously to eDNA metabarcoding. To address this, 12S metabarcoding, COI metabarcoding, electrofishing, hoop netting, seine netting, minnow trapping, and gill netting samples were taken at 10 sites across four waterbodies from July eighth to July 13th, 2023. Typically, during sampling method comparisons, diversity or species richness is used as the metric. However, relying solely on these metrics often leads to misinterpretation. In order to rigorously statisticall

SUBMITTER: Bonk EA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12947614 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature