Anaïs Lacoursière-Roussel

Laval University | ULAVAL · Department of Biology

The National Aquatic Invasive Species Committee (NAISC), a federal-provincial-territorial committee that reports to the Canadian Council of Fisheries and Aquaculture Ministers (CCFAM), submitted a request to DFO Science for science advice related to the potential risk that the recreational boating vector poses to freshwater and marine systems in Ca...

Among vertebrates, herpetofauna has the highest proportion of declining species. Detection of eDNA is a promising method towards significantly increasing large-scale herpetological conservation efforts. However, the integration of eDNA results within a management framework requires an evaluation of the efficiency of the method in large natural envi...

The relationship between shipping and invasion success in marine waters has rarely been demonstrated empirically. In commercial ports, greater shipping activity is expected to increase invasion success at both the community and population levels by altering the diversity of exotic species discharged (colonization pressure) and the number of introdu...

Several trace-elements have been identified as indicators of finfish aquaculture organic enrichment. In this study, sediment sampling at finfish farms was completed as part of an Aquaculture Monitoring Program in three distinct Canadian regions. Despite diverse datasets, multivariate analyses show a consistent clustering of known direct (Cu and Zn)...

In a recent paper, “Environmental DNA: What's behind the term? Clarifying the terminology and recommendations for its future use in biomonitoring,” Pawlowski et al. argue that the term eDNA should be used to refer to the pool of DNA isolated from environmental samples, as opposed to only extra‐organismal DNA from macro‐organisms. We agree with this...

The integration of environmental DNA (eDNA) within management strategies for lotic organisms requires translating eDNA detection and quantification data into inferences of the locations and abundances of target species. Understanding how eDNA is distributed in space and time within the complex environments of rivers and streams is a major factor in...

In a recent paper, “Environmental DNA: What’s behind the term? Clarifying the terminology and recommendations for its future use in biomonitoring”, Pawlowski et al. argue that the term eDNA should be used to refer to the pool of DNA isolated from environmental samples, as opposed to only extra-organismal DNA from macro-organisms. We agree with this...

In a recent paper, “Environmental DNA: What's behind the term? Clarifying the terminology and recommendations for its future use in biomonitoring”, Pawlowski et al. argue that the term eDNA should be used to refer to the pool of DNA isolated from environmental samples, as opposed to only extra-organismal DNA from macro-organisms. We agree with this...

Large‐scale biomonitoring of Arctic coastal marine communities is essential to track temporal changes in ecosystems. Despite the potential of environmental DNA (eDNA) as an innovative coastal biomonitoring tool, important questions remain pertaining to its temporal and spatial variation and how this may affect the evaluation of ecosystem changes ov...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

Arctic biodiversity has long been poorly documented and is now facing rapid transformations due to ongoing climate change and other impacts, including shipping activities. These changes are placing marine coastal invertebrate communities at greater risk, especially in sensitive areas such as commercial ports. Preserving biodiversity is a significan...

We developed a new predictive approach to evaluate the relative invasion hazard posed by recreational boats as vectors for non-indigenous species (NIS) in marine ecoregions on the Atlantic coast of Canada. It combines data from behavioral boater questionnaires, surveys of boat macrofouling, and an extensive NIS monitoring program in marinas. The re...

The analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) using metabarcoding has increased in use as a method for tracking biodiversity of ecosystems. Little is known about eDNA in marine human-modified environments, such as commercial ports, which are key sites to monitor for anthropogenic impacts on coastal ecosystems. To optimise an eDNA metabarcoding protocol...

Because significant global changes are currently underway in the Arctic, creating a large‐scale standardized database for Arctic marine biodiversity is particularly pressing. This study evaluates the potential of aquatic environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding to detect Arctic coastal biodiversity changes and characterizes the local spatio‐temporal...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding can greatly enhance our understanding of global biodiversity and our ability to detect rare or cryptic species. However, sampling effort must be considered when interpreting results from these surveys. We explored how sampling effort influenced biodiversity patterns and nonindigenous species (NIS) detection in...

The genomic revolution has fundamentally changed how we survey biodiversity on earth. High-throughput sequencing (‘HTS’) platforms now enable the rapid sequencing of DNA from diverse kinds of environmental samples (termed ‘environmental DNA’ or ‘eDNA’). Coupling HTS with our ability to associate sequences from eDNA with a taxonomic name is called ‘...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) promises to ease non-invasive quantification of fish biomass or abundance, but its integration within conservation and fisheries management is currently limited by a lack of understanding of the influence of eDNA collection method and environmental conditions on eDNA concentrations in water samples. Water temperature is kno...

Titre de l'affiche : La diffusion des connaissances sur les risques et les stratégies de surveillance pour les espèces aquatiques envahissantes dans les ports canadiens de l'Arctique. Résumé de la présentation : Natural barriers to the establishment of aquatic invasive species (AIS) in Arctic Canada are rapidly being reduced by climate change and...

Special report for knowledge exchange workshops, describing morphology, habitat, invasion history, and impacts of 13 marine species with high potential for indroduction to the Canadian Arctic.

Introductions of exotic fouling species have severely disrupted marine ecosystems. Theory suggests that high propagule pressure increases the probability of successful establishment. Likewise, empirical studies have shown the importance of ships and boats for transporting exotic species. However, few empirical studies have demonstrated the effect o...

In marine systems subject to vessel traffic, the likelihood of an invasion by an exotic species typically increases with the arrival of each infested boat. In this paper, recreational boating activity patterns and boat fouling by tunicates were compared between eastern Canada and central New Zealand, and the relative importance of boat characterist...

The relative importance of multiple vectors to the initial establishment, spread and population dynamics of invasive species remains poorly understood. This study used molecular methods to clarify the roles of commercial shipping and recreational boating in the invasion by the cosmopolitan tunicate, Botryllus schlosseri. We evaluated (i) single vs....

Anthropogenic activities frequently result in both rapidly changing environments and translocation of species from their native ranges (i.e., biological invasions). Empirical studies suggest that many factors associated with these changes can lead to complex genetic patterns, particularly among invasive populations. However, genetic complexities an...

Summary1. The most effective way to manage nonindigenous species and their impacts is to prevent their introduction via vector regulation. While ships’ ballast water is very well studied and this vector is actively managed, hull fouling has received far less attention and regulations are only now being considered despite its importance for introduc...

The nature of the sexual system (protandry, gonochory) and the frequency of female spawning (semelparous, iteroparous annual, iteroparous biennial) in the crangonid Sclerocrangon boreas remain uncertain. We addressed these questions by examining population sex ratio, anatomy and histology, and gonad and oöcyte sizes. Gonochory is supported by sever...