Key management rules for agricultural alpine newt breeding ponds based on habitat suitability models

Monitoring newt communities in urban area using eDNA metabarcoding

Newts are amphibians commonly present in small ponds or garden pools in urban areas. They are protected in many countries and their presence is monitored through visual observation and/or trapping. However, newts are not easy to spot as they are small, elusive and often hidden at the bottom of water bodies. In recent years, environmental DNA (eDNA) has become a popular tool for detecting newts, with a focus on individual species using qPCR assays. Here, we assess the effectiveness of eDNA metabarcoding compared to conventional visual surveys of newt diversity in 45 ponds within urban areas of Geneva canton, Switzerland. We designed newt-specific mitochondrial 16S rRNA primers, which assign the majority of amplicons to newts, and were able to detect four species known to be present in the region, including the invasive subspecies Lissotriton vulgaris meridionalis, native to the Italian peninsula, that has been introduced in the Geneva area recently. The obtained eDNA results were congruent overall with conventional surveys, confirming the morphological observations in the majority of cases (67%). In 25% of cases, a species was only detected genetically, while in 8% of cases, the observations were not supported by eDNA metabarcoding. Our study confirms the usefulness of eDNA metabarcoding as a tool for the effective and non-invasive monitoring of newt community and suggests its broader use for the survey of newt diversity in urban area at larger scales.

An Integrated Approach of Multi-Community Monitoring and Assessment of Aquatic Ecosystems to Support Sustainable Development

Aquatic ecosystems are one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world resulting in the decline of aquatic biodiversity. Monitoring and the assessment of aquatic ecosystems are necessary to protect and conserve these ecosystems as monitoring provides insights into the changes in the aquatic ecosystem over a long period of time and assessment indicates the status of these ecosystems. This paper presents an overview of different methods for the hydromorphological, physical–chemical and the biological monitoring and assessment of surface waters. Furthermore, recently developed monitoring and assessment methods are discussed to support sustainable water management and contribute to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals 6 (SDG6 related to clean water and sanitation) and 15 (SDG15 related to terrestrial and freshwater systems) of the United Nations. However, many other SDGs are dependent on freshwater, such as food (e.g., SDG2) and climate-related SDGs. We presented an innovative concept for integrated monitoring and assessment. The main new elements are the monitoring of all communities and the use of integrated socio-environmental models to link these communities to ecosystem interactions and functions as a basis for determining their relation to the SDGs. Models can also allow to determine the effects of changes in SDGs on the different elements of the concept, and serve in this manner as tools for the selection of an optimal balance between the SDGs in the context of sustainable development.