Information pertaining to relationships between habitat characteristics and species distributions is critical to guide conservation strategies for imperiled species. Little is currently known about the habitat features required by many threatened or endangered reptiles and amphibians of the Great Lakes region. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding can be used to detect species otherwise not easily detected by other sampling methods. Through analysis of species-specific DNA sequences collected from filtered water, species presence and relative sequence abundance can be estimated. Our objectives for this research were to develop and optimize eDNA sampling protocols for wetland habitats, implement a regional eDNA survey to identify hotspots of wetland biodiversity and update species distribution data, and use species distribution and occupancy models to characterize habitat and climate associations for numerous species of conservation concern. In Years 1 and 2 of the project, we detected 29 and 27 herpetofauna species, respectively. We observed no difference in the number of species detected between water samples collected at a single point and across a 5m transect (p = 0.52). No difference in species richness was observed between community sequence data obtained from 12S and 16S mitochondrial DNA markers (p = 0.96). We found a significant difference in the number of species detected between late and early sampling periods (p = 7e-7). Occupancy modeling results suggest that the number of wetland types sampled (Thamnophis unclassified: Bayesian estimate coefficient = 0.04) and the percentage of developed land cover (Ambystoma texanum: coefficient = 0.20; Emydoidea blandingii: coefficient = -0.21) had no significant effect on patterns of site occupancy.
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