World Oceans Day : Deep Dive Discussion (June 8, 2025)

Dr. Jesse McNichol, St. Francis Xavier University

eDNA Sequencing for Coastal Ecosystem Monitoring

• Food / oxygen production (base of food webs)
• Nutrient regeneration
• Greenhouse gas production / consumption
• Influence geology, climate, chemistry, and biology of Earth

Microbial life

Microbes are critical in marine systems

But what about the future?

https://showyourstripes.info/

Microbial life

But what about the future?

How will climate change and coastal pollution affect "ecosystem services" that microbes provide to us?

 NASA PACE

How to monitor these dynamic and changing systems?

How to monitor these dynamic and changing systems?

ESA Copernicus

DNA sequencing is now very cheap!

Image credit: Chavez et al., 2021

Cheap DNA sequencing → "eDNA profiles"

Image credit: Chavez et al., 2021

Cheap DNA sequencing → "eDNA profiles"

Vincent and Vardi, 2023

eDNA profiles → ecosystem monitoring across time & space

• Accessible to non-experts, community organizations, affordable and sustainable
• Leading to collaborative, interdisciplinary research asking exciting new questions
• A record of changing ecosystems, and a possible warning for state changes

eDNA sequencing's future

After the lapse of many years, possibly a century, the student of the future will have access to the original record of faunal conditions in California."

 

-Annie Montague Alexander, from "Why Ecology Needs Natural History"

Today's data will help us understand the future

Closing thought

At a time when forces are trying to distract and disrupt the scientific enterprise, doing the important work of finding and sharing the truth is now a great act of resistance."

 

-H. Holden Thorp, 2025 (link)

Thanks for your attention!

stfxmicroeco.ca | jmcnicho@stfx.ca