ABOVE: Water voles are among the terrestrial animals identified using eDNA collected from waterbodies. This one was live-trapped in Scotland.
REBECCA TANNER
Environmental DNA has become the ecologist’s shiny new tool, unraveling mysteries about endangered and elusive aquatic species in recent years. The novel biomonitoring method looks for traces of DNA shed by fish and other organisms in water bodies. Now, scientists are adapting the technique to search for the presence of land-dwelling creatures.
Scientists have recently sampled eDNA from streams and rivers in the UK and in the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest in Brazil to assess local mammal communities, and their results surprised them. Published in two separate studies, the team detected 20 wild mammal species, some of which are difficult-to-survey animals, including red deer, mountain hares, pine martens, red foxes, and badgers in the UK, according to findings published March 20 in The Journal of Applied Ecology. The ...
