Data for "Environmental DNA metabarcoding reflects rank-based abundance of fish"

Inferring organism abundance or biomass from sequence counts derived from metabarcoding data has been an exciting but contentious concept in the biomonitoring community for some time. Although demonstrating strong correlation with fish abundance measures has proven difficult, many researchers have assumed that quantitative metabarcoding data can at least provide broad-scale ranking of abundance. However, field validations of this assumption remain scarce. Here, we analyse read counts of eDNA data derived from 20 lakes with overlapping species composition to show a good relationship with within-species across-site rank abundance categories for fishes. The benefit of this approach is the potential for rapid assessment of rank abundance for multiple species, including smaller species which are often missed by conventional methods such as gillnetting. This approach will assist practitioners taking a species-based approach to freshwater habitat management in lakes worldwide.