Biodiversity Monitoring in the Musquash Marine Protected Area using Environmental DNA - 2022

We collected water samples from just below the surface in the Musquash Estuary MPA in 2022 for environmental DNA metabarcoding to assess and monitor the biodiversity of the MPA over time. 1L water samples were collected by Niskin bottle from a small vessel and filtered using 0.22um Sterivex filters at the St. Andrews Biological Station. Samples were extracted and sequenced on an Illumina NovaSeq platform at the Centre for Environmental Genomics Applications (St. John's, Newfoundland). FASTQ files were demultiplexed and analyzed through the QIIME2 pipeline and denoised using dada2. This dataset consists of 12S reads targeting fishes, but other markers will be included within this project over time.