Longitudinal and Seasonal Profiles of Concentration of Stream Environmental DNA for Stream Invertebrates in Fresh Water

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a novel molecular technique to detect presence of target species from a water sample. This paper applies the eDNA approach to invertebrates to reveal longitudinal and seasonal profiles of the eDNA along a river passing through diverse land-uses. We examined a relationship between the target eDNA concentration and wet weight of invertebrates concurrently sampled at three reaches along the Hirose River in Japan. As a result, no significant correlations between the target eDNA and the wet weight was observed. Concentration of extracted eDNA (non-specific) displayed significant difference between the studied localities and significant correlation with water-temperature.