Samar is considered as one of the biodiversity hotspots in the Philippines.  Its freshwater ecosystem could be home to diverse indigenous aquatic species which have been largely undocumented and unmonitored.  This aquatic biodiversity which inhabits the nine-river ecosystem of Samar needs close monitoring and conservation initiatives to save and sustain the richness and distribution of aquatic species, and to continue its function to support particularly the food and livelihood of the local community along these rivers.  

The success of documentation, biomonitoring and consequent conservation of aquatic species in the Samar Island Natural Park depends primarily on the concerted effort of scientists who will initially conduct these activities to establish and publish this information. As such, to convey continued support for conservation from the government and the local communities.  

Knowledge on the most sensitive, highly efficient and cost effective technologies, techniques and methodologies to survey or detect not only single species but multispecies of aquatic animals particularly indigenous and rare species inhabiting the river ecosystem is a pre-requisite to maximize the establishment of aquatic species database and the development of a conservation-oriented monitoring of aquatic species in Samar.  It has been observed that traditional monitoring relied on physical identification of species by visual surveys and counting of individuals, remain problematic due to difficulties associated with correct identification of cryptic species or juvenile life stages, a continuous decline in taxonomic expertise, non-standardized sampling, and invasive nature of some survey techniques. Hence, there is an urgent need for an alternative and efficient techniques for large-scale biodiversity monitoring.  This, to introduce High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) such as Next Generation Sequencing or NGS or by nanopore sequencing which is currently the advanced and most sensitive tool used to pursue our objectives such as to survey, monitor and conserve biodiversity of aquatic species in freshwater ecosystems like fishes and crustaceans.   It uses eDNA or environmental DNA which is defined as genetic material obtained directly from environmental samples (soil, sediment, water, etc.) without any obvious signs of biological source material – that is an efficient, non-invasive and easy-to-standardize sampling approach to survey species richness from any ecosystems (Deiner, K. et al., 2016 and Thomsen and Willerslev, 2014). 

This eDNA metabarcoding strategy to survey, monitor and to save biodiversity of indigenous and rare aquatic species in Samar could be used as a model to study aquatic biodiversity in other parts of the country.  This is a re entry research project of the proponent after her PhD in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology as far as her trainings in genomics and next generation sequencing is concerned. The NGS and/or nanopore sequencing approach that will be employed in this project are best and appropriate tools to achieve our objectives as supported by our literatures on eDNA metabarcoding.