Environmental DNA (eDNA) detects the invasive crayfishes Orconectes rusticus and Pacifastacus leniusculus in large lakes of North America

By E. Larson, M. Renshaw, Crysta A. Gantz, J. Umek, S. Chandra, David M. Lodge, S. Egan. Hydrobiologia, 2017

92 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report results of a study that made reciprocal comparisons of environmental DNA (eDNA) assays for two major invasive crayfishes between their disparate invasive ranges in North America. Specifically, we tested for range expansions of the signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus (Dana, 1852) into the Laurentian Great Lakes region known to be invaded by the rusty crayfish Orconectes rusticus (Girard, 1852), as well as for the invasion of O. rusticus into large lakes of California and Nevada, US known to be invaded by P. leniusculus. We compared eDNA detections to historic localities for O. rusticus within the Great Lakes, and to recent sampling for presence/absence and relative abundance of P. leniusculus in California and Nevada via overnight sets of baited traps. We successfully detected O. rusticus eDNA at six sites from the Great Lakes and P. leniusculus from six of seven lakes where it was known to occur in California and Nevada, but did not detect any range expansions by either species across the North American continent. eDNA appears suitable to detect benthic arthropods from exceptionally large lakes, and will likely be useful in applications for monitoring of new biological invasions into these and other freshwater and marine habitats.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/969442af0325dea78fe86acd964dba8a2c4d5e4e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. A. Green
2. A. Suarez
3. M. Clavero
4. E. Larson
5. L. Boyero
6. J. Figuerola
7. J. Peig
8. Luis Santamaría

In Global and Planetary Change

1. A. Suarez
2. A. Green
3. M. Clavero
4. E. Larson

In Molecular Biology

1. Marta I. Sánchez
2. A. Green
3. M. Clavero
4. F. J. Oficialdegui
5. Kristie Klose
6. T. Kawai
7. T. Michot
8. L. Boyero

Citations in the corpus

• Meta‐analysis supports further refinement of eDNA for monitoring aquatic species‐specific abundance in nature (2019, unknown): “Experimental groupings Sample Size Environment Species Metric Baldigo et al. (2017) 2 1 27 Natural Salvelinus fontinalis Biomass, Density Doi et al. (2017) 6 3 6–7 Natural Plecoglossus altivelis Biomass, Density Dougherty et al. (2016) 1 1 12 Natural Oronectes rusticus Density Erickson et al. (2016)”
• Unravelling the global invasion routes of a worldwide invader, the red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) (2019, background): “Large-scale 512 phylogeographic studies provide accurate datasets for improving invasive species detection 513 protocols based on eDNA (Ficetola et al., 2008; Larson et al., 2017).”
• From eDNA to citizen science: emerging tools for the early detection of invasive species (2020, background): “2017), and the simplicity of sample collection makes it an appealing tool for citizen scientists (Larson et al. 2017).”