Midwest Fish & Wildlife Conference 2018

AUTHORS. Craig Jackson, Jon Amberg, Chris Merkes, Stacey Kageyama - Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center

ABSTRACT. The detection of environmental DNA (eDNA) from water samples has become a useful technique in monitoring the presence of aquatic invasive species (AIS). Some AIS are difficult to capture or observe using traditional methods, and are often present in low numbers at the leading edges of an invasion front. For resource managers, time is clearly of the essence in terms of mounting a successful control program. Early detection of invading organisms by indirect eDNA-based methods can increase the odds of successfully eradicating a small invading population before it begins successfully reproducing in a new habitat.Digital PCR (dPCR) is said to be more robust (i.e. less sensitive to reaction inhibition) than quantitative PCR (qPCR) and is capable of absolute copy number determination. In theory, eDNA samples with higher copy numbers may indicate that a larger number of target organisms were present at that site.  However, in our current eDNA survey of the upper Mississippi River for bigheaded carps almost all positive eDNA detections had copy numbers below the limit of quantitation (i.e.