Aquatic biodiversity in a pond on the airport landside areas through environmental DNA metabarcoding: Implementation for Aviation Security Management

Abstract

Abstract. Priyono DS, Reza A, Eprilurahman R, Yudha DS, Mufti D, Fauzy NH, Triyono RB, Adhi PK. 2022. Aquatic biodiversity in a pond on the airport landside areas through environmental DNA metabarcoding: Implementation for Aviation Security Management. Biodiversitas 23: 3639-3646. Environmental DNA (eDNA) has become a widely used tool for aquatic biodiversity monitoring, as well as for formulating effective landscape management strategies. Yogyakarta International Airport (YIA), Indonesia, has a green belt landscape located on the Indian Ocean coast. YIA's landscape biodiversity analysis is still unexplored. Herein, we first used high throughput sequencing DNA metabarcoding to identify and investigate aquatic biodiversity in a pond on the airport landside areas. The metabarcoding eDNA sequencing analysis yielded 224,737 raw reads from the metagenomics utilizing Illumina MiSeq sequencing. We identified 588 eukaryote species from 205 families and 300 genera. Actinopteri is the most dominant class with a diversity of 160 taxa, followed by Mammalia (88), Amphibia (60), and Chlorophyceae (25). At the order level, Anura has the highest order diversity (50), followed by Rodentia (31), Chiroptera (17), Eulipotyphla (16), Squamata (15), and Cypriniformes (14). We found that Plasmodium was the genus with the highest relative abundance in this pond (18,030 reads). Furthermore, the large variety of fish and other taxa in this pond may attract waterbirds, increasing the risk of bird strike. The abundance of Plasmodium sp. in this airport area is an important issue, especially regarding airport malaria risk. Integration of biodiversity monitoring using eDNA with aviation security management provides valuable information for the airport's wildlife hazard management plan. To prevent the recurrence of bird strikes and prevent airport malaria, aviation security strategies utilizing habitat management approaches are recommended.