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Thesis
A Comparison of Environmental DNA to ROV Video and Two Environmental DNA Methods to Identify Fishes in the Northern Gulf of America
University of West Florida Libraries
Master of Science (MS), University of West Florida
2025
Abstract
The northern Gulf of America (nGOA), formerly Gulf of Mexico (Exec. Order No. 14172, 2025), hosts a variety of habitats, and monitoring their inhabitants has been accomplished through a variety of methods such as the use of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and using environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding. With technological advances, eDNA metabarcoding continues to improve and change, and the way these techniques are being utilized to detect taxa in an ecosystem has not been standardized. To identify fishes inhabiting the Mississippi-Alabama continental shelf area, we utilized ROV video and eDNA samples collected from the same sites concurrently, to determine if the methods resulted in complimentary fish identifications. Overall and across site comparisons of the fish taxa identified were shown to be different by method with a Bray-Curtis resemblance measure showing 71.3% difference and 2-way nested ANOVA R statistic of 0.68. While ROV video and eDNA metabarcoding identified different fish taxa, their resulting identifications were able to fill in the gaps of the biases per method, capturing a holistic picture of the observed ecosystem. To investigate eDNA sampling methods to detect fishes in the nGOA, the precipitation method, where 15 mL of seawater was preserved in sodium acetate and ethanol solution, and filtration method, where 2 L of seawater was filtered using a 0.22 μm Sterivex filter, were used to collect eDNA samples at the same site to compare resulting fish detections by method. Unfortunately, the sequences yielded from the precipitation and filtration methods were low quality and the comparison was not completed. As technology improves, the use of ROV video and eDNA metabarcoding will continue to expand, making it essential to evaluate best practices to effectively monitor fishes in the nGOA.
Details
- Title
- A Comparison of Environmental DNA to ROV Video and Two Environmental DNA Methods to Identify Fishes in the Northern Gulf of America
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Contributors
- Alexis M Janosik (Committee Chair)Stacey L Harter (Committee Member)Cheryl L Morrison (Committee Member)Viktoria Esther Bogantes Aguilar (Committee Member) - University of West Florida, Biology
- Publisher
- University of West Florida Libraries
- Format
- pdf
- Number of pages
- 53
- Copyright
- © 2025 Jennifer Ann Herting
- Identifiers
- 99381469453406600
- Academic Unit
- Biology
- Language
- English
- Awarding Institution
- University of West Florida; Master of Science (MS)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), University of West Florida