Can high-throughput sequencing detect macroinvertebrate diversity for routine monitoring of an urban river?

Melissa E Carew; Claudette R Kellar; Vincent J Pettigrove; Ary A Hoffmann

Journal article

Can high-throughput sequencing detect macroinvertebrate diversity for routine monitoring of an urban river?

Melissa E Carew, Claudette R Kellar, Vincent J Pettigrove, Ary A Hoffmann

ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS | ELSEVIER | Published : 2018

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2017.11.002

Abstract

Macroinvertebrate families identified through morphological examination have traditionally been used in routine assessment of freshwater ecosystems. However, high throughput DNA sequencing (HTS) promises to improve routine assessment by providing rapid and cost-effective identification of macroinvertebrate species. In freshwater ecosystems in urbanised areas where family diversity is often low, new insights into ecosystem condition and impacting factors are likely through species-level assessments. Here we compare morphological identification to HTS based identification of macroinvertebrate families by considering 12 sites in an urban river system. Some taxa detected morphologically were not..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Ary Hoffmann Author Biosciences

Melissa Carew Author Biosciences

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

The authors thank Katherine Jeppe, Daniel MacMahon and Cameron Amos for their assistance with collection of macro-invertebrates and sediments. We acknowledge Gavin Rose, Pei Zhang and Anh Duyen Bui for sediment and water pesticide analysis. We also thank Michael Shackleton, David Cartwright and John Dean for the use of their DNA barcode information. We also thank Rahul Rane for his advice in the laboratory and on data analysis, and Isabel Valenzuela for assistance with primer selection. This study was funded primarily by the Australian Research Council through their Linkage (grant numbers LP0989324, LP150100876) and Fellowship (grant number FL100100066) schemes, with additional support from Melbourne Water Corporation, City West Water and the Victorian Government and EPA Victoria, and through the Illumina corporation via their 'Pilot the possibilities' grant scheme.