Monitoring methods based on environmental DNA are faster, more comprehensive and cheaper than traditional ecological surveys. They help fill gaps in New Zealand’s data on river health.
Environmental DNA provides a wealth of information for conservationists, archaeologists and forensic scientists. But the unintentional pickup of human genetic information raises ethical questions.
The estuarine pipefish is not easy to find - it camouflages itself amid seagrass.
Louw Claassens
Rivers are among the most embattled ecosystems on Earth. Researchers are testing a new, inexpensive way to study river health by using eDNA to count the species that rivers harbor.
In Canada, watersheds are vast and often inaccessible, making it difficult to monitor the health of these ecosystems. A new tool helps communities collect data to assess the state of Canada’s rivers.
Water sampling for eDNA analysis.
Photograph credit: Katrina West.
DNA sequencing means a scientist can take a bucket of seawater and ID every fish in the area. Now we need a universal ‘biobank’ of samples to make a truly powerful environment monitoring tool.
If you’re convinced Nessie’s real, would science unconvince you?
AP Photo/Norm Goldstein
Artūrs Logins, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
If you’re committed to a belief, it’s hard to let go. Psychology and philosophy provide different ways to think about how skeptics respond to counterevidence.
We cannot spot every shark in the ocean. But we can detect their ‘environmental DNA’.
A worker handles meat at the Doly-Com abattoir in Romania in 2013 when Europe was facing a scandal over incorrectly declared horsemeat. The problem of food fraud and its health and economic implications affect a broad range of foods around the world, but technology could soon end the problem.
(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Animals shed bits of DNA as they go about their lives. A new study of the Hudson River estuary tracked spring migration of ocean fish by collecting water samples and seeing whose DNA was present when.