DNA metabarcoding and morphological macroinvertebrate metrics reveal the same changes in boreal watersheds across an environmental gradient.

ABSTRACT: Cost-effective, ecologically relevant, sensitive, and standardized indicators are requisites of biomonitoring. DNA metabarcoding of macroinvertebrate communities is a potentially transformative biomonitoring technique that can reduce cost and time constraints while providing information-rich, high resolution taxonomic data for the assessment of watershed condition. Here, we assess the utility of DNA metabarcoding to provide aquatic indicator data for evaluation of forested watershed condition across Canadian eastern boreal watersheds, subject to natural variation and low-intensity harvest management. We do this by comparing the similarity of DNA metabarcoding and morphologically derived macroinvertebrate metrics (i.e. richness, % Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera, % chironomid), an

SUBMITTER: Emilson CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5630640 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature