Environmental DNA captured on the fish skin mucus

The development of environmental DNA metabarcoding, and the availability of recent DNA sequencing techniques offer new possibilities in diet analysis. Despite the advantages, there are still drawbacks to using DNA metabarcoding for diet analysis. One of the disadvantages is the risk of contamination, whether from the environment or from the body surface of the organism itself. Each step of the procedure has the potential to be affected by contamination, so it is important to minimize their occurrence and identify potential sources of contamination. Thus the main aim of this study was to examine the risk of contamination, which may occur during non-lethal sampling.