D3414: Using eDNA to play 'Wack-a-Mole' with invasive species in green yard waste

As large cities begin to overrun their landfill capacities, they begin to look for alternative locations to handle the waste stream. Seeing an opportunity to bring in revenue, rural communities offer to handle municipal waste in their landfills. Unfortunately, many rural communities are also locations of agricultural production, which are vulnerable to attacks by invasive species. When this situation involves the movement of the waste stream across international borders, things become very complicated. We used a combination of ecological niche modeling and eDNA to determine whether green yard waste could be a pathway for invasive species to enter and establish in the landfill-receiving agricultural community. We identified several target species that could be in green yard waste coming from Vancouver, BC to Central Washington State. We sampled green yard waste from 4 locations every 2 weeks from June-October in 2019 and 2020. DNA was extracted from the nearly 400 samples and subjected to amplification with COI barcoding primers followed by sequencing to identify insects in the samples. Sequence analyses identified several Orders of organisms, including species from the target list. This eDNA technique was useful in identifying potential invasive species in green yard waste and may prove to be a useful tool in stemming the spread of invasive species.