Surveying Aquatic Invasive Species across the National Park System

We are building an optimized primer and assay screening pipeline for 18 priority Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS). This project will decrease cost and processing time for forthcoming batches of AIS. This work, coupled with surveys of diverse environmental samples, will determine the best molecular assay for species-specific detection and obtain preliminary data on the distribution of the targeted organisms in the environment. In addition, we are performing quantitative PCR (qPCR) for species-specific detection to determine detection limits across environments, and performing metabarcoding PCR with published and custom designed universal/broad biodiversity primers such as those targeting the CO1-5P, cytB, matK or trnL loci. This task will include synthesis of our workflow from the initial 18 species as standard operating protocols for future AIS environmental DNA assay development.