Date of Award:

5-2026

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Watershed Sciences

Committee Chair(s)

Scott Hotaling

Committee

Scott Hotaling

Committee

Paul Frandsen

Committee

Daniel Nelson

Abstract

Alpine streams and the macroinvertebrate communities that reside within them are threatened by the rapidly changing climate. Long-term monitoring of these communities is required to understand how they are changing and to predict their future trajectories. Historically, stream monitoring and assessment has been performed by collecting and identifying individuals using their morphological traits. However, in alpine aquatic ecosystems, distinct macroinvertebrate species often lack the morphological differences that allow them to be distinguished. DNA metabarcoding, an alternative method for identification which uses genetics instead of morphological differences, is not impacted by this issue, and therefore, may be better suited for alpine stream monitoring. Here, we compare morphology- and DNA metabarcoding-based assessments of streams in the Teton Range, Wyoming. We found that DNA metabarcoding allowed us to identify a greater number of taxa, but sometimes, a taxon was found using morphology-based assessment only. In these cases, we determined that the incompleteness of reference databases used for DNA metabarcoding was the primary source of error. We then compared our DNA metabarcoding data to a similar study from Colorado, where more database building effort has occurred. We found that by increasing the regional coverage of reference databases, the performance of DNA metabarcoding is improved.

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