Unfortunately not, but would have been interesting to see that. Also just filtering 1L with 64 um would have allowed to separate the effects of volume and filter pore size !

Thanks @rleonsampedro.bsky.social for the great picture !

Yeah, stuff like this keeps me up at night ...

Big thanks to all the collaborators and co-authors @alpineedna.bsky.social ... See more detailed methods and a lot more analyses in the publication openly accessed via this link dx.doi.org/10.1002/edn3... (8/8)

Interestingly, these patters were different for ITS plant marker and COI metazoan marker! How does the source organisms impact spatial and particle size distribution of their eDNA? Can we optimise our capture methods depending on the target group? More work to be done! (7/8)

Not just the number but also the type of taxa differ. Beta diversity plots show samples cluster by location (as expected) but also by capture method ! Your choice of methods can dramatically impact your eDNA results ! (6/8)

However, the metabarcoding results show more unintuitive patterns. Although the grab samples capture 100 times less DNA, the DNA it does capture represents significantly greater alpha diversity than that captured in tow nets. These results were consistent across all sites. (5/8)

We conducted the experiment in three different locations with varying water matrices: Switzerland, Montana, and Florida and found surprising consistent results ! First, we see that the tow nets (blue) captured ~100 times for DNA than grab sample filters (red). (4/8)

So here we tested whether increasing volume of water processed, indeed improved species diversity detection metabarcoding. We compared two extremes of volume-pore size combinations 1) 1L via 0.45 um filter and 2) 3500-7000 L filtered via 64 um tow net. (3/8)

The paper starts with a review of 300+ studies showing water volume depends on filter pore size. Thus, it may be intuitive to use larger pores to process more water and capture patchily distributed eDNA diversity. (2/8)

The paper covers key topics in both fields, highlighting what biologists and hydrologists need to know about each other's work. We provide actionable steps on how they can integrate a multidisciplinary approach in their research. Shout out to all the co-authors and participants of the conference !

In this paper, we discuss how biologists using #eDNA in freshwater systems can benefit from integrating hydrological approaches to track the source of their eDNA, and how our understanding of water movement can be improved by using eDNA as a hydrological tracer (2/n)