Assessing different components of biodiversity across a river network using eDNA

Abstract

O_LIAssessing individual components of biodiversity, such as local or regional taxon richness, and differences in community composition is a long-standing challenge in ecology. It is especially relevant in spatially structured and diverse ecosystems. Environmental DNA (eDNA) has been suggested as a novel technique to accurately measure biodiversity. However, we do not yet fully understand the comparability of eDNA-based assessments to previously used approaches. C_LIO_LIWe sampled may-, stone-, and caddisfly genera with contemporary eDNA and kicknet methods at 61 sites distributed over a large river network, allowing a comparison of various diversity measures from the catchment to site levels and providing insights into how these measures relate to network properties. We extended our survey data with historical records of total diversity at the catchment level. C_LIO_LIAt the catchment scale, eDNA and kicknet detected similar proportions of the overall and cumulative historically documented species richness (gamma diversity), namely 42% and 46%, respectively. We further found a good overlap (62%) between the two contemporary methods at the regional scale. C_LIO_LIAt the local scale, we found highly congruent values of local taxon richness (alpha diversity) between eDNA and kicknet. Richness of eDNA was positively related with discharge, a descriptor of network position, while kicknet was not. C_LIO_LIBeta diversity between sites was similar for the two contemporary methods. Contrary to our expectation, however, beta diversity was driven by species replacement and not by nestedness. C_LIO_LIAlthough optimization of eDNA approaches is still needed, our results indicate that this novel technique can capture extensive aspects of gamma diversity, proving its potential utility as a new tool for large sampling campaigns across hitherto understudied complete river catchments, requiring less time and becoming more cost-efficient than classical approaches. Overall, the richness estimated with the two contemporary methods is similar at both local and regional scale but community composition is differently assessed with the two methods at individual sites and becomes more similar with higher discharge. C_LI