This seminar is part of the NOAA 'Omics Seminar Series, which takes place on the third Wednesday of every month at 12pm ET / 9am PT. 'Omics describes a suite of cutting-edge tools used to analyze DNA, RNA, proteins, or metabolites.

Date: July 8, 2022

Title: Using Environmental DNA to Examine Artificial Reef Fish Assemblages: If You Build It Will They Come?

Presenter: Dr. Kyle Piller

Abstract: Globally, estuarine and marine fisheries have declined over the past century, and a variety of approaches have been employed in an attempt to improve fisheries, including, but not limited to the development of protected areas, implementation of catch regulations, hatchery stocking, and the deployment of artificial reefs. Of these, the use of artificial reefs has been the most recently developed approach. Unfortunately, assessing the success of artificial reefs has been challenging due to the difficulty of using traditional sampling gears to assess species diversity at artificial reefs. My lab gathered environmental DNA metabarcode data (12S mtDNA) to examine fish assemblages associated with artificial reefs of varying ages and construction materials (limestone, concrete, shell, and oil and gas), as well as across seasons and changing environmental conditions in the northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM) and in Lake Pontchartrain, a large estuarine system in southeastern Louisiana. Generally, our results indicate higher species richness at reefs versus paired control sites, as well as differences among reef position and environmental conditions. Environmental conditions seem to be one of the most important drivers of artificial reef fish assemblages in the region, rather than reef materials. The results from two independent eDNA artificial reef studies will be presented.