Diversity of fishes along the Texas Gulf Coast using environmental DNA metabarcoding

Environmental DNA metabarcoding (eDNA) utilizes shed DNA collected from environmental samples such as water or soil to identify biodiversity without using traditional techniques that require invasive or disruptive methods. To amplify fish eDNA, MiFish 12S Universal primers were used to target the 170 base pair fragments of the 12S rRNA gene. Forty-seven unique species were detected and identified from these filtered sequences, including 40 teleost species and seven non-target mammal and avian species. Out of the 40 total teleost species detected, 33 of the 219 total native species along the Texas coastline were identified. Additionally, eight of the total 40 identified teleost species were not known to occur in the Gulf of Mexico. These non-native species were found to be genetically similar to another species within the same genus that is native to the Texas coast. Since no elasmobranchs were detected in field samples using the MiFish 12S Universal primers, future studies should utilize updated primers that better target elasmobranch sequences such as the Elas02 12S primer set or other primers that target COI gene. Overall, species richness at each site illustrated a wide range in diversity with many ecologically and economically important bony fish detected, such as menhaden, which are one of the most important fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico.