Emprego do eDNA metabarcoding na investigação da biodiversidade de peixes de um reservatório urbano

Abstract

Biodiversity monitoring in aquatic environments is essential for ecosystem conservation and sustainable natural resource management. The use of non-invasive methods, such as environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding, has emerged as an effective and promising alternative for studying aquatic species diversity. In this context, this project developed eDNA metabarcoding protocols for monitoring fish fauna in Lagoa dos Ingleses, a Neotropical freshwater artificial lake.. We also compared different eDNA collection methodologies and assessed their effectiveness for biodiversity elucidation. The choice of Lagoa dos Ingleses, an artificial lake located in Nova Lima, Minas Gerais, Brazil, as a model for improving fish monitoring is strategic, as it is an easily accessible site with a reduced fish fauna. The results indicate that the methodology can identify native, endemic, and introduced species, and provide information on the temporal and spatial variation of species occurrence in the reservoir. We identified 44 possible species, belonging to 39 genera and 22 families. We observed that the choice of the monitoring protocol influences the results, with Sterivex filters recovering the identification of more species, even with a smaller volume of filtered water. The sampling design employed was crucial, as the spatial and temporal variation of the species required monitoring of multiple points in different seasons to obtain a more complete picture of the reservoir's biodiversity.