Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Development And Field Validation Of An Environmental Dna (Edna) Assay For Invasive Clams Of The Genus Corbicula, Dominique A. Cowart, Mark A. Renshaw, Crysta Gantz, John Umek, Sudeep Chandra, Scott P. Egan, David M. Lodge, Eric R. Larson

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Early detection is imperative for successful control or eradication of invasive species, but many organisms are difficult to detect at the low abundances characteristic of recently introduced populations. Environmental DNA (eDNA) has emerged as a promising invasive species surveillance tool for freshwaters, owing to its high sensitivity to detect aquatic species even when scarce. We report here a new eDNA assay for the globally invasive Asian clam Corbicula fluminea (Müller, 1774), with field validation in large lakes of western North America. We identified a candidate primer pair for the Cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) gene for C. fluminea. We …