FUNDAMENTAL STUDY OF RIVER BIOTIC INTEGRITY EVALUATION USING QUANTITATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL METABARCODING

Abstract

 In this study, we examined the river biotic integrity scores on different tributary habitat types (natural and artificial tributaries) and relationships between the scores and discharge in the tributaries of the Gonokawa River in Japan using quantitative environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding. The analysis results indicate that the biotic integrity scores in the natural tributary streams tended to be higher than th ose in the irrigation channels. In addition, stream discharge was positively related to species richness based biotic integrity scores . This study indicates that quantitative eDNA metabarcoding is an efficient bio monitoring tool, elucidating the biotic integrity of t he tributaries.