Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding to study the Gulf of Saint Lawrence fish community

I am interested in conservation biology issues and believe that we must save our beautiful planet from stress. As a post-doc I am working on the Environmental DNA (eDNA) projects in collaboration with the government. eDNA study expect to move from single-marker analyses of species to meta-genomic surveys of entire ecosystems to predict spatial and temporal biodiversity patterns.

My ongoing research is a part of Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) project and University of Rimouski (UQAR) that aims to investigate return of ground fish to the estuary and northern Gulf of St. Lawrence. I will apply eDNA metabarcoding technique to study the composition of the Gulf of St. Lawrence demersal fish community. PCR amplification of target genes can be combined with next-generation sequencing (NGS) to provide high-throughput information on the species present. These tools are useful for assessing the presence of species that are recognized as being less vulnerable to DFO fishing gear (eg sandeel), or to characterize areas that are not DFO-capable (eg, Basse-Côte -North). The results of the proposed research program will be presented as part of the stock assessments and will contribute to improving our understanding of the factors that regulate the fishery resource dynamics of the St. Lawrence estuary and northern areas.

My second project which is in collaboration with Ministère des Forêts, de la Faune et des Parcs, aims to evaluate persistence and diffusion of environmental DNA in the St. Lawrence River system and evaluation of the performance of different sampling methods. The main objective of this project is to evaluate the performance of the eDNA methodology in order to detect the presence and estimate the abundance of 4 different fish species (Brown and rainbow trout, yellow sturgeon and grass carp) in the St. Lawrence River at several spatial scales.