Climate change is contributing to major geographic shifts in species distributions worldwide - many species no longer live where they once did historically, and many are moving to new places where they have never before been recorded.

 

In marine environments, it is difficult to track such large-scale changes in species movement with conventional monitoring where you either need to see or catch organisms in the ocean. Even at local scales, such surveys involve high costs and effort, and existing frameworks for broad geographic monitoring produce data at low spatial and temporal resolutions. In short, current monitoring schemes cannot keep up with the pace and footprint of global change, and we need innovative strategies for conservation and management.

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My research on this topic explores the potential for environmental DNA sampling to provide a feasible and reliable alternative for detecting large-scale changes in marine species distributions. I am focusing this effort on rocky intertidal habitats along a 1000-km stretch of the California coast. This extent includes two biogeographic breaks delimiting range edges for many fishes, invertebrates, and macrophytes. Here, I will implement an eDNA sampling program with the goals of resolving range edges for multiple taxa, exploring how spatial signals for different species change throughout the year, and comparing eDNA-based range edges to those established by conventional surveys.

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Collaborators and *funding: Steve Gaines (P.I., UCSB), Alexa Fredston (P.I., UC Santa Cruz), Owen Liu (NOAA), Chris Jerde (UCSB), *Zegar Family Foundation, Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network, The Nature Conservancy