Metabarcoding the Global Fouling Community.
Abstract
Temperate and tropical ports around the globe host a group of fouling animals and plants that areweeds tolerant of pollution, with short reproductive intervals and rapidly settling larvae orpropagule stages. Most these organisms moved around the globe with shipping and beforebiofouling science. Understanding fouling pressure from these dominant macrofoulers could beuseful to management of ship cleaning for example. We propose to use eDNA to quantify thiscommon group of biofoulers. The initial work would be done in the laboratories with water fromoff the docks in 3 geographically and temperature disparate harbors, one in Beaufort - NC, one inPort Sultan Qabbos; Muscat - Oman and one in Townsville - QLD, Australia. Weve identified11 dominant fouling organisms in each harbor. In Beaufort, Rittschof and Schultz will generatepropagules in the laboratory, settle them, and extract their DNA/eDNA to amplify nuclearsequences for DNA barcoding. DNA extracted from individuals will be used to create acomprehensive database of sequences for identification of biofouling organisms. Initially, wewill utilize qPCR to develop primers to amplify sequences from specific groups of biofoulers(e.g. barnacles, tunicates, tubeworms, bryozoans etc.) and quality check our eDNA samples.Amplified products will then be used to develop Target Sequence Capture (TSC) probes fornext/3rd-generation sequencing (Illumina MiSeq and Nanopore) in order to selectively enhancefor target organism DNA from the complex mixtures of sequences present in eDNA samples. Wewill optimize and standardize physical filtering process and time of collection and generateprimers that specifically target our biofouling species of interest. Our goal will be to develop away to assess the macrofouling community and fouling pressure. Ideally we would develop aprocedure that was qualitative and that could eventually be quantitative.If one examines the biofouling literature, especially published reports in peer review journals thatoriginated from Office of Naval Research (ONR) programs, one readily identifies groups ofbiofoulers with cosmopolitan distributions from tropical to temperate regions (Rittschof, 2017,Rittschof and Holm 1997; Vasishtha et al., 1995), Inter-site calibration (Holm et al, in prep)(Often the dominant biofoulers are the same species (e.g. Hydroides elegans, Amphibalanusamphitrite, Bugula neritina), or closely related species with the same habits (eg. Hydroides spp.,Bugula turrita, Amphibalanus spp., colonial hydroids Obelia, Ectopleura; algae Enteromorphaspp.). Our plan is to develop an efficient water collection procedure and pipeline for sequenceanalyses of eDNA samples that can be deployed anywhere in the world to assess the presenceand relative abundance of biofoulers. Examples of potential use are assessing biofouling inharbors, on stationary and moving sensors, in ballast water, and on ship hulls.In Phase 2, we would test our hypothesis of common fouling species by take the show on theroad and working with our colleagues that run the testing sites used for biofouling testing forthe last 20 years in novel materials program (Singapore, Hawaii, Melbourne FL and San LouisObispo) and having our colleagues assess the fouling communities described from eDNA in wellstudied biofouling communities. We anticipate this technology concept could be used withmodification to work with fouling communities outside of harbors to assess fouling pressure inregions of navy interest.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 05, 2021
- Source ID
- N000142112662
Entities
People
- Daniel Rittschof
Organizations
- Duke University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy