PS 79-159 - Environmental DNA survey methods: Water sampling methods using an unmanned aerial vehicle

Friday, August 11, 2017
Exhibit Hall, Oregon Convention Center
Hideyuki Doi1, Yoshihisa Akamatsu2, Yutaka Watanabe3, Masuji Goto2, Ryutei Inui2, Izumi Katano4, Mariko Nagano1, Teruhiko Takahara5 and Toshifumi Minamoto6, (1)Graduate School of Simulation Studies, University of Hyogo, Japan, (2)Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamaguchi University, Japan, (3)Luce Search, Inc, Hiroshima, Japan, (4)Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Environmental Science, Nara Women's University, Japan, (5)Faculty of Life and Environmental Science, Shimane University, Japan, (6)Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University, Japan
Background/Question/Methods

Environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques using DNA fragments in the water have recently been developed to investigate distributions and abundance/biomass of aquatic organisms. The eDNA technique is based on analyzing the DNA fragments in the collected water, thus unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, drone) would be useful to collect the water for eDNA, consequently may allow us to extend eDNA survey spatially and temporally. Here, we developed a new bleachable gears of water collection by UAV with considering to avoid the DNA contamination.

Results/Conclusions

To test the performance and contamination risk of UAV water sampling for eDNA survey, we performed the water sampling in a dam reservoir to detect the eDNA of two fish species with comparing water sampling from boat, and investigated the contamination using the blank samples. From our testing, we found that our UAV water sampling had similar performance with water sampling by boat. Also, we did not detect any positive signals in all blank samples, including UAV sampling, transporting, filtering, and PCR blanks. Our UAV method can be applied to investigate species distributions using eDNA, and the combinations of UAV technologies, including remote and thermal sensing, can provide us efficient environmental monitoring in various types of water bodies.