NAWA project CO1 Leray MiSeq library using 384 samples from an eDNA campaign for water quality assessments. NAWA CO1 Leray MiSeq

Environmental DNA is used to survey of macroinvertebrate communities to assess biodiversity and the biological state of riverine systems in Switzerland. Kick-net and eDNA sampling were employed to monitor aquatic macroinvertebrate indicator taxa at 92 sites spread across major Swiss river catchments. The metabarcoding data were taxonomically assigned using a customised reference database and all zero-radius Operational Taxonomic Units (n = 205) mapping to one of the 145 traditionally used indicator taxon levels were used for subsequent analyses. Overall we found that environmental DNA sampling has the potential to complement traditional surveys of macroinvertebrate communities in routine large-scale assessments in a non-invasive and scalable approach.