021 at 10:11 a.m. | UPDATED: December 26, 2021 at 12:44 p.m.
A plop of rain met parched California ground and trickled into a creek. There it scraped against fish and slipped through their gills, stealing traces of each encounter. The droplet then carried the genetic souvenirs downstream until it reached an innovative device that helped unlock the secrets of the creek’s creatures.
“We call this a microbiology lab in a can,” said Jim Birch, director of the SURF center at the Moss Landing-based Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
That “can” is actually MBARI’s environmental sample processor, a $200,000 robotic laboratory the size of a 50-gallon drum. It gathers genetic clues — cells, mucus, feces — from ecosystems that are collectively dubbed environmental DNA, or eDNA.
In a project on Scott Creek north of Davenport, the device produced one of the nation’s largest single-site eDNA data collections. From April 2019 to April 2020, scientists uncovered details about endangered and invasive species in the freshwater ecosystem. Now a scientific paper in the works, the study reinforces the growing interest in detecting and better protecting hard-to-find species using eDNA monitoring instead of more invasive techniques such as fish counts.
“It has that ability to do that without having to put a lot of nets in the water,” said MBARI’s Kevan Yamahara, a specialist on the device and one of the paper’s authors.
Worldwide interest in eDNA’s ability to detect rare organisms has expanded over the past few decades. The new technology rediscovered a rare aquatic insect population in the United Kingdom. It detected more mammals than traditional camera traps in the Canadian wilderness. It helped track the spread of the coronavirus.
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Environmental DNA reveals the secrets of a California creek and beyond