EESS talk on "Environmental DNA metabarcoding as a new tool for biomonitoring: promises and challenges"
Event details
| Date | 22.03.2016 |
| Hour | 12:15 › 13:15 |
| Speaker | Dr Jan Pawlowski, Lab for Molecular evolution and ecology of protists, University of Geneva, CH |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Abstract:
Biodiversity surveys are commonly used for the environmental impact assessment and biomonitoring of aquatic ecosystems. Traditional monitoring is based on morphotaxonomic inventories of biological communities, which are time-consuming, expensive and require excellent taxonomic expertise. The eDNA metabarcoding offer a powerful tool to describe the biodiversity in environmental samples. However, the capacity of metabarcoding to meet the quality standards of bioindication is subject of controversy.
In my talk, I will present our pilot studies evaluating the potential of eDNA metabarcoding for the assessment of the quality of aquatic ecosystems. We compare the morpho-taxonomic and eDNA data for different groups of freshwater and marine bioindicators (diatoms, oligochaetes, benthic macro- and meiofauna). The results are very promising showing a significant correlation between biotic indices inferred from morphological and molecular data, despite gaps in the reference database and variations in relative abundance of analysed species. Although some challenging issues still need to be solved, the molecular approach appears as a promising tool for more sensitive and cost and time effective environmental monitoring in the future.
Short biography:
Jan Pawlowski is a Professor of Biology at the Department of Genetics and Evolution, University of Geneva. He is leading the research group on molecular evolution and ecology of microbial eukaryotes. Large part of his activities is devoted to DNA barcoding. Currently, he is working on the development of eco-genomic tests for biomonitoring and survey of aquatic ecosystems. He is the chair of the Swiss Barcode of Life (SwissBOL) and the founder of ID-Gene ecodiagnostics Ltd.
Biodiversity surveys are commonly used for the environmental impact assessment and biomonitoring of aquatic ecosystems. Traditional monitoring is based on morphotaxonomic inventories of biological communities, which are time-consuming, expensive and require excellent taxonomic expertise. The eDNA metabarcoding offer a powerful tool to describe the biodiversity in environmental samples. However, the capacity of metabarcoding to meet the quality standards of bioindication is subject of controversy.
In my talk, I will present our pilot studies evaluating the potential of eDNA metabarcoding for the assessment of the quality of aquatic ecosystems. We compare the morpho-taxonomic and eDNA data for different groups of freshwater and marine bioindicators (diatoms, oligochaetes, benthic macro- and meiofauna). The results are very promising showing a significant correlation between biotic indices inferred from morphological and molecular data, despite gaps in the reference database and variations in relative abundance of analysed species. Although some challenging issues still need to be solved, the molecular approach appears as a promising tool for more sensitive and cost and time effective environmental monitoring in the future.
Short biography:
Jan Pawlowski is a Professor of Biology at the Department of Genetics and Evolution, University of Geneva. He is leading the research group on molecular evolution and ecology of microbial eukaryotes. Large part of his activities is devoted to DNA barcoding. Currently, he is working on the development of eco-genomic tests for biomonitoring and survey of aquatic ecosystems. He is the chair of the Swiss Barcode of Life (SwissBOL) and the founder of ID-Gene ecodiagnostics Ltd.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- EESS - IIE
Contact
- Dr Benoît Ferrari, Centre Ecotox EPFL-EAWAG, Lausanne