Aquaculture is intimately linked to the functioning of the receiving ecosystem through various direct and indirect interactions and feedbacks. To date, aquaculture research has predominantly focused on near-field benthic effects. Limited research has documented bay-scale ecosystem impacts, including the potential impacts at higher trophic level.
aquaculture ecosystem interactions requires a method and
a sampling design able to detect changes in ecosystem structures over time. With its power to increase coastal survey coverage, environmental DNA (eDNA) is increasingly employed to monitor ecosystems and support decision-making. However, little is currently known about how the detection rate of coastal eDNA changes seasonally and regionally in relation to biological and physical factors. As a result, there is no guidance on optimal sampling periods to design eDNA studies for most species . Better understanding how factors alter eDNA presence are not only fundamental to optimizing eDNA project planning and avoiding false negatives, but also to interpreting temporal trends in eDNA detections within and between ecoregions, including better understanding the discrepancies between eDNA and specimen-based surveys results.
We
will present a new DFO initiative aiming to develop an online tool to report and visualize trends in spatio-temporal eDNA distributions of Canadian species. The lat ter will fill important knowledge gaps on how genomic tools can differentiate impacted and non-impacted ecosystems associated with
human activities, such as aquaculture.