Environmental DNA – An emerging tool in conservation for monitoring past and present biodiversity

The continuous decline in Earth’s biodiversity represents a major crisis and challenge for the 21st century, and there is international political agreement to slow down or halt this decline. The challenge is in large part impeded by the lack of knowledge on the state and distribution of biodiversity – especially since the majority of species on Earth are un-described by science. All conservation efforts to save biodiversity essentially depend on the monitoring of species and populations to obtain reliable distribution patterns and population size estimates. Such monitoring has traditionally relied on physical identification of species by visual surveys and counting of individuals. However, traditional…

• NR
  National Research Foundation
• DG
  Danmarks Grundforskningsfond