Download Freshwater ecosystem assessment - Centre for Marine Biodiversity

Freshwater ecosystem assessment:
new tools, new opportunities
Donald Baird
AEIRD
Environment Canada
& Canadian Rivers Institute
Department of Biology
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, NB
Canada’s Freshwater Ecosystems
Assessing the status
of freshwater ecosystems
•
•
•
Traditionally focused on two
aspects of habitat
•
•
Physical (e.g. volume, flow)
Chemical (e.g. nutrients)
Physico-chemical measures alone
are insufficient to assess how
ecosystems are performing
More recently attention has
focused on ecosystem health
Freshwater biomonitoring
•
•
Survey the local biota
•
Develop a reference site
model, by sampling
minimally impacted
habitats (e.g. National
Parks)
Choose an appropriate
group of organisms as
indicators of ecosystem
health
Benthic Macroinvertebrates
•
•
Diverse group of animals
•
Sampling protocols are well
developed
•
•
Cost-effective
Key component of
freshwater food webs
Uncharismatic but speciose
➡ fish = ca. 250 spp
➡ inverts = >10000 spp
Assessing the ecological quality of a river
Reference site
Impacted sites
Assessing the ecological quality of a river
Reference site
Impacted sites
Traditional bioassessment
highly stressed
reference state
moderately stressed
moderately stressed
Diagnostic bioassessment
organic pollution
reference state
flow modification
pesticide runoff
Shelford’s Law of Tolerance
“Succession of species is the
result of the stability of the mores
of species concerned; when mores
are flexible, species do not
succeed one another, but continue
with changes in behavior and
physiological characters.”
V.E. Shelford (1911) Biological
Bulletin 22: 1-38.
Flow tolerance
Heptagenid mayflies
abundance
optimum
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0
20
40
60
80
velocity (cm/s)
100
120
140
Traits: why not all species are equal...
ECOLOGY
Mode of feeding:
macrophagous
engulfing
predator
MORPHOLOGY
Armouring:
sclerotized
waxy cuticle
PHYSIOLOGY
Mode of respiration:
internal
gills
Trait ecoinformatics
Traits respond to environmental gradients
Horrigan & Baird (2008)
Relating biology to flow
•
•
Biological data from CABIN
•
Match CABIN and
HYDAT sites spatially and
temporally
•
Examine how communities
change along gradients of
river flow
River flow data from
HYDAT
Diagnostic for flow alteration
Canadian Ecological Flows Index (CEFI)
CEFI
Baird et al. (2008)
Ecoinformatics bottlenecks: Lack of data
Ecoinformatics: connecting information
Web 2.0
Undiscovered Public
Knowledge
•
Don Swanson, an American information scientist at the
University of Chicago, introduced the concept in a paper in
1986
•
Simple message: public data are available, but not often
accessed or linked
•
Considerable data exist nationally, but are currently more
or less inaccessible
•
Need to make data accessible and usable
Ecoinformatics bottlenecks: Taxonomy
Phylum - Class - Order - Family - Genus - Species
Increasing analytical power
Increasing cost of processing sample
Solution: GENOMICS
The Human Genome Project
•
Initiated in 1988, with no clear timeframe
Year
Duration
Cost
1990
13 years
$3 billion
2007
2 months
$1 million
2008
<4 weeks
$100,000*
* Illumina Corp.
DNA Barcoding – A Target Region
DNA barcodes: an internal ID System
DNA
The Mitochondrial Genome
D-Loop
Small ribosomal RNA
Cytb
Cytochrome b
ND6
Typical Animal Cell
ND2
COI
mtDNA
L-strand
H-strand
Target
Region
COII
Mitochondrion
COIII
DNA barcodes: a breakthrough technique
•
Short, standard genetic
sequences
•
Enable taxonomic
verification at the species
level
•
Potentially more accurate
than traditional taxonomy
•
•
cryptic species
juvenile stages
BioBlitz
BioBlitz
Barcoding: Conventional DNA Sequencing
Specimen
Tissue Sample
Extract
DNA
PCR Amplify
Sequence
Mirrored
Databases
Building barcode libraries
Xin Zhou
(PDF, Guelph)
Biodiversity in the Blender
Environmental Barcoding
Massively Parallel Pyrosequencing:
Species identifications from ‘slurries’
Environmental barcoding and new sequencing technology
Massively Parallel Pyrosequencing
One reaction = ~400,000 sequence reads of ~200 bp
Barcode PCR
Emulsion PCR
Read sequences
3 hrs
8 hrs
7 hrs
Environmental barcoding
Funding secured: $1.8 million from Genome Canada to establish
world’s first biomonitoring pyrosequencing lab.
Costs of biomonitoring
Land area
(km2)
GDP/km2 ($)
Number of
monitoring sites
England &
Wales
152,170
11,700,000
7000
Australia
2,553,287
239,574
1700
USA
9,161,923
1,282,482
12600
Canada
9,984,670
102,457
?
Biomonitoring in Canada:
The Future
•
•
•
•
•
Biomonitoring will be inexpensive, rapid and accurate
‘Remoteness’ will remain a major cost factor
Need for a network of ‘ecosystem observatories’
•
•
e.g. National Parks
Linkage with other networks (e.g. HYDAT)
Development of pollution diagnostics
Assessment of national biodiversity status and trends
& natural capital estimation
Thank you!
1