Territory Stories

Environmental DNA for fish community assessment, desert waterholes of Central Australia

Details:

Title

Environmental DNA for fish community assessment, desert waterholes of Central Australia,

Creator

Northern Territory, Department of Lands, Planning and Environment. Water Resources Division,

Collection

E-Publications, E-Books, PublicationNT, Report No. 44/2025,

Date

2025-09-25,

Location

Finke River, Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre,

Abstract

This report evaluates the effectiveness of environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques to identify individual fish species in the Finke River, a key monitoring region in the Kati Thanda - Lake Eyre Basin. Since 2012, the Lake Eyre Basin Rivers Assessment (LEBRA) has employed standardised methods to monitor fish communities in this ecologically significant area. With recent advances in eDNA technology, this study explores the value of two types of eDNA methods (metabarcoding and qPCR) to detect species presence in addition to the existing methods used in the LEBRA program.,

Notes

Made available by via Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004 (NT),

Table of contents

1. Summary -- 2. Introduction -- 3. Methods -- 4. Results -- 5. Discussion -- 6. Conclusion -- 7. Reference -- Appendix 1: Reference material for Finke River qPCR assay development,

Language

English,

Subject

Finke River, Metabarcoding, Fish species, Lake Eyre Basin Rivers Assessment (LEBRA), qPCR, Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre,

Publisher name

Northern Territory Government,

Place of publication

Palmerston (NT),

Series

Report No. 44/2025,

Format

13 pages : colour map ; 30 cm,

File type

application/pdf,

Use

Attribution International 4.0 (CC BY 4.0),

Copyright owner

Northern Territory Government,

License

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/,

Parent handle

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/1013853,