环境DNA技术在鱼类生态学中的应用研究进展

Advances in the application of environmental DNA technology in fish ecology

全球渔业衰退是21世纪人类面临的重要挑战之一。为了有效地遏制鱼类资源的衰退,精确的鱼类生态调查是其首要任务。传统的鱼类监测以渔获物采集与形态学鉴定为主,往往耗时耗力且效果不佳,已无法满足现阶段大尺度上的精确调查。环境DNA(eDNA)技术作为一种近年来新兴的鱼类生态调查方法,其与传统方法相比具有灵敏度高、经济高效、采样受限小且对生态系统无干扰的优势,目前其已被广泛地应用于鱼类物种监测、多样性调查、生物量评估以及繁殖活动监测等方面的研究。然而,eDNA技术在鱼类生态学研究的具体应用中暴露出的一些问题将会影响其监测结果的精确性,诸如操作流程的不规范、基因数据库的不完善以及eDNA在环境中生态学过程的不明确等。鉴于上述原因,首先对eDNA技术的发展历程、分析流程以及eDNA技术在鱼类生态学研究领域中的研究进展进行了综述,而后着重分析了eDNA技术的发展当前所面临的困难与挑战,并提出了相应的解决方案,最后对eDNA技术未来在鱼类生态学研究领域中的发展趋势做出了展望。通过本研究,以期能够为eDNA技术在鱼类生态学领域中的准确应用提供理论基础。

The decline of global fisheries is one of the major challenges in the 21st century.In recent years,global fish diversity has declined dramatically under the influence of human activities.In order to effectively curb the decline of fish resources,the accurate fish ecological surveys are the top priority.Traditional fish monitoring is based on catch collection and morphological identification,which is often time-consuming and ineffective,and can no longer meet the needs of accurate surveys at large scales.As an emerging method of fish ecological survey in recent years,environmental DNA technology has the advantages of high sensitivity,low technical threshold,cost-effective,small sampling limitation and no disturbance to the ecosystem compared with the traditional methods.Environmental DNA is the total DNA of all organisms obtained from environmental samples such as water,sediment,soil,and air that have not been pre-isolated.At present,environmental DNA technology has been widely applied in the research of fish species monitoring,diversity survey,biomass assessment,spawning activity monitoring,population genetic analyses,fish feeding analyses and ecological health evaluation.However,some problems exposed in the specific application of environmental DNA technology in fish ecology studies can affect the accuracy of its monitoring results,such as the irregularity of the operation procedure,the incompleteness of the genetic database,and the unclear ecological processes of environmental DNA in the environment.In order to be able to obtain more credible results from environmental DNA technology,researchers must have an accurate grasp of the developments in environmental DNA technology.Therefore,this paper firstly reviews the development history of environmental DNA technology,the analysis process and the research progress of environmental DNA technology in the field of fish ecology research.Then,we focus on the current difficulties and challenges faced by the development of environmental DNA technology and propose the corresponding solutions.Finally,an outlook is given on the future development trend of environmental DNA technology in the field of fish ecology research.Although environmental DNA technology has been widely used worldwide,its development in China is still in the preliminary stage.We aim to provide a theoretical foundation for the accurate application of environmental DNA technology in the field of fish ecology in China.It is believed that in the near future,environmental DNA technology will be able to develop significantly in the field of fish ecology,and is expected to become a routine tool for fish resources survey.