Habitat degradation and land-use change severely threaten the survival of fairy shrimp and the vernal pools in which they live. Limiting effective fairy shrimp conservation management efforts is the ability to readily identify species without the capture and sacrifice of individuals for microscopy. Here we demonstrate that eDNA metabarcoding is an effective non-invasive tool for monitoring fairy shrimp. Results from ten Southern California vernal pools comparing eDNA and traditional dip-net methods showed that eDNA metabarcoding with 16S rDNA provides exceptional species-level resolution. Importantly, while the two methods were concordant during early hydroperiods where adults were present, eDNA detected fairy shrimp for up to 2 months after dip-nets failed to detect any adults, expanding the time period for vernal pool monitoring. Together, these results provide resource managers a simple, cost-effective, and non-invasive method for biomonitoring endangered fairy shrimp species.

栖息地的退化和土地利用的变化严重威胁着仙虾及其生存的春季池的生存。限制有效的仙女虾保护管理工作的能力是能够容易地识别物种，而无需捕获和牺牲个体进行显微镜检查。在这里，我们证明eDNA metabarcoding是监测仙女虾的有效非侵入性工具。十个南加州春季库的结果比较了eDNA和传统的浸入网方法，结果表明eDNA元条形码与16SrDNA提供了卓越的物种级分辨率。重要的是，尽管这两种方法在有成年的早期水生时期是一致的，但是在浸入网未能发现任何成年后，eDNA可以在长达两个月的时间内检测到仙女虾，从而延长了春季池监测的时间。总之，这些结果为资源管理者提供了一种简单，经济高效且非侵入性的方法来对濒临绝种的仙虾进行生物监测。