Evaluating the efficiency of different DNA-barcoding approaches for routine stream monitoring tasks

Description

The focus of this project is to evaluate exemplary for the freshwater fauna of the river Sieg (Germany) the efficiency of different single specimen DNA-barcoding approaches for routine stream monitoring tasks.

The taxonomic resolution of morphological and DNA barcode-based species identification is directly compared, investigating additional value and congruence of both methods. In cases where standard COI barcodes failed to offer unambiguous species identifications, the discrimination capacity of the nuclear rhodopsin marker (RHO) is tested. High resolution melting (HRM) is combined with DNA barcoding (Bar-HRM) to analyse if this identification approach offers a simpler, faster and cheaper alternative to Sanger-sequencing based single specimen barcoding.

Location