Fig. 3

The Aquatic Invasive Species management framework relies on an interpretation of the magnitude of eDNA reads tallied per taxa per sample in the overall classified read count (Log 10 number of reads). Metabarcoding data has a long tail of randomly distributed reads due to index hopping (see “Defining a Detection” section of the Discussion for an explanation of why thresholds of 0.6% and 1.0% were established). The reads tallied for each sample/primer/taxon combination in the lower 0.6% of the dataset are dropped, the detections from 0.6–1% require validation, and detections above the 1% threshold are considered positive. By differentiating between a positive detection and a low detection, this management framework offers a threshold below which validation of the detection should occur before additional management actions are triggered, retaining the sensitivity of the method without reacting to a potential false positive.