The diversity of fish species in our fjords are under threat. UiO has monitored fish populations in the inner Oslofjord over the past decade through trawling, showing that there are clear seasonal changes. There also appears to be persistent changes in the numbers of some species, such as Atlantic cod. In this project we intent to use a novel approach based on eDNA metabarcoding (or metagenomics) that is the simultaneous identification of multiple fish species from the DNA extracted from an environmental sample. In contrast to traditional trawling to obtain species inventories the eDNA approach is none invasive and selective, less time consuming and difficult to apply, and does not cause injury to target and non-target species. The student will participate in cruise on our research vessel, sample and extract water samples and analyse data. The data will be compared to data from trawling.
Contact Ketil Hylland (ketilhy@ibv.uio.no) or Alexander Eiler (alexander.eiler@ibv.uio.no) if you are interested.