1 Title: eDNA metabarcoding outperforms traditional fisheries sampling and reveals fine-scale 1 heterogeneity in a temperate freshwater lake 2 Running Title: Metabarcoding outperforms traditional sampling 3 Authors: Rebecca R Gehri* 1 , Wesley A. Larson 2,3 , Kristen Gruenthal 4 , Nicholas Sard 5 , and Yue 4 Shi 1,6 5 Affiliations: 6 1 Wisconsin Cooperative Fishery Research Unit, College of Natural Resources, University of 7 Wisconsin-Stevens Point, 800 Reserve St., Stevens Point, WI 54481, USA. gehrir@gmail.com 8 9 2 U.S. Geological Survey, Wisconsin Cooperative Fishery Research Unit, College of Natural 10 Resources, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, 800 Reserve St., Stevens Point, WI 54481, 11 USA 12 13 3 National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, 14 Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Auke Bay Laboratories, 17109 Point Lena Loop Road, Juneau, 15 AK 99801, USA, wes.larson@noaa.gov 16 17 4 Office of Applied Science, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Wisconsin 18 Cooperative Fishery Research Unit, College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin‐ 19 Stevens Point, 800 Reserve St, Stevens Point, WI, 54481, USA 20 21 5 State University of New York at Oswego, Biological Sciences Department, 30 Centennial Dr., 22 Oswego, NY 13126, Nicholas.sard@oswego.edu 23 24 6 College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 17101 Point Lena 25 Loop Road, Juneau, AK 99801 USA, yshi8@alaska.edu 26 27 *Corresponding author 28 29 . CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license available under a (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted October 21, 2020. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.20.347203 doi: bioRxiv preprint