Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding for Community-Based Monitoring of Culturally Significant Fish Species in Wood Buffalo National Park.

The Peace-Athabasca Delta (PAD) is the largest of North America´s freshwater inland deltas and is an Outstanding Universal Value of Wood Buffalo National Park World Heritage Site (UNESCO). The waters of the delta have been and remain the habitat of essential fishery resources for the Indigenous Communities in the area. However, there is insufficient scientific knowledge concerning the abundance and distribution of fishes, their health and the structure of the food webs that support them within the PAD. Current capture-based sampling methods cannot effectively assess and monitor freshwater ecosystems. The Genomic Network for Fish Identification, Stress and Health (GEN-FISH) is developing a variety of molecular “tool kits” to conduct fish surveys and fish health assessments for freshwater systems across Canada. A pilot project was conducted in the fall of 2021 to determine the potential utility of these tools for addressing critical knowledge gaps concerning fish diversity, distribution, and health in the PAD. In this context, High-Throughput DNA “metabarcode” Sequencing methods were employed to assess community diversity from traces of DNA that organisms shed into the aquatic environment (eDNA). One main project objective was to evaluate the utility of the molecular tools to determine what fish species are present at sites of interest in and around the PAD at a particular point in time using eDNA metabarcoding. Samples were collected in collaboration with local Indigenous Governments, CBM technical staff & the CBM Land Users Network, Parks Canada, and GEN-FISH. Using two different marker genes (COI and 12S), the eDNA metabarcoding studies detected a combined total of fourteen fish species known to inhabit the PAD, with different distributions noted among fifteen different sampling locations. Differential performance in fish detection was observed between the molecular markers used (12S and COI), with 12S providing more specificity for fishes and COI providing more taxonomic breadth with the detection of a diversity of birds, mammals, and invertebrates from the region.