The journal Environmental DNA publishes open access “Interspecific allometric scaling in eDNA production among northwestern Atlantic bony fishes reflects physiological allometric scaling” by Matthew C. Yates, Taylor M. Wilcox, M. Y. Stoeckle, and Daniel D. Heath. pdf here.
The paper finds that integrating allometry significantly improved correlations between organism abundance and metabarcoding read count relative to traditional metrics of abundance (density and biomass) for bony fishes. Future studies investigating the relationship between eDNA signal strength and metrics of fish abundance could improve by accounting for allometry; to this end, the paper develops an online tool that can facilitate the integration of allometry in eDNA/abundance relationships.
Interspecific allometry eDNA – an online tool
Explore how accounting for allometric scaling in environmental DNA (eDNA) shedding rates influences the correlation with organism count and abundance data. Users can upload their own datasets and use the slider to vary the allometric scaling coefficient (b). Allometry can be applied intra-specifically (among populations) or interspecifically (among species). Size-distribution data supplied to the function can also either be individual-level (e.g. a size distribution of individuals for each population) or population-level (e.g. the mean mass of individuals within a population).