Genetic tools for biodiversity monitoring in aquatic ecosystems

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Research on biodiversity, its impact on ecosystem functioning, how it is distributed geographically, and which factors are important in maintaining it are among the main issues in ecology worldwide. Biodiversity monitoring is an issue in its own right, bu t equally important is that many organism groups are extensively used for monitoring effects of pollution, habitat degradation, or climate change, including monitoring according to the Water Framework Directive. Many monitoring methods depend on detecting the presence or abundance of species. The biological components of these monitoring programs are generally among the most time-consuming and expensive parts. At the same time, determination to species level is often practically impossible due to the pres ence of cryptic species, the presence of immature individuals which often cannot be identified to species level, lack of unique morphological traits in very small species, or simply the loss of classical taxonomic knowledge among ecologists. In the presen t Strategic Institute Initiative (SIS), we aim to cope with the drawbacks named above by developing and implementing genetic markers as routine tools for monitoring aquatic biodiversity. By analyzing phytoplankton, charophytes and microcrustaceans, we spe cifically aim to o develop markers and protocols for detecting particularly important species (black- and red-listed species) o develop tools that allow identifying and quantifying invertebrate larval stages that are otherwise unidentifiable o resolve ta xonomic ambiguities within selected organism groups used in present marine and freshwater monitoring, including red-listed taxa, and provide tools that allow reliable identification o compare sensitivity and validity of microscopic phytoplankton identific ation with the resolution obtained by molecular markers o develop tools for routine detection of toxic cyanobacterial strains o develop protocols for multi-species detection in environmental samples