The effect of tides on nearshore environmental DNA
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Author and article information
Abstract
Organisms of all kinds leave genetic traces in their environments, and in recent years, sequencing this environmental DNA (eDNA) has become a tractable means of surveying many species using water, air, or soil samples. The technique is beginning to become a core tool for ecologists, environmental scientists, and biologists of many kinds, but the temporal resolution of eDNA sampling is often unclear, limiting the ecological interpretations of the resulting datasets. Here, in a temporally and spatially replicated field study using ca. 330bp of eukaryotic COI mtDNA as a marker, we find that nearshore organismal communities are largely consistent across tides. Our findings suggest that nearshore eDNA tends to be endogenous to the site and water mass sampled, rather changing systematically as waters change over during the tidal cycle. However, where water-mass characteristics change, we find that the eDNA communities change in concert, again suggesting a close association between the habitat sampled and the eDNA community recovered.
Cite this as
2017. The effect of tides on nearshore environmental DNA. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3436v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3436v1note This preprint is not peer-reviewed. You may wish to reference the subsequent peer-reviewed version of this article.
Author comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Sections
Supplemental Information
Analytical Code
Complete analytical code for generating the analysis and manuscript.
Dependency data
Data upon which the analysis depend.
Additional Information
Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Ryan Kelly performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Ramón Gallego conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Emily Jacobs-Palmer analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
DNA Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding the deposition of DNA sequences:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzZGMQtKnZYFc3h4ekd5ODVocTg?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzZGMQtKnZYFclZnZk5RNDdJWFU?usp=sharing
(it is over 9GB of sequence data, which is too big for figshare, so it's a google drive link for now)
(will be submitted to genbank upon acceptance)
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
Genbank
Google Drive for now: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzZGMQtKnZYFclZnZk5RNDdJWFU?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzZGMQtKnZYFc3h4ekd5ODVocTg?usp=sharing
Funding
This work was made possible by grant 2016-65101 from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to RPK. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.