Archived natural DNA samplers reveal four decades of biodiversity change across the tree of life.

ABSTRACT: Detecting the imprints of global environmental change on biological communities is a paramount task for ecological research. But a lack of standardized long-term biomonitoring data prevents a deeper understanding of biodiversity change in the Anthropocene. Novel sources of data for analysing biodiversity change across time and space are urgently needed. By metabarcoding highly standardized biota samples from a long-term pollution monitoring archive in Germany, we here analyse four decades of community diversity for tens of thousands of species across the tree of life. The archived samples-tree leaves, marine macroalgae, and marine and limnic mussels-represent natural community DNA samplers, preserving a taxonomically diverse imprint of their associated biodiversity at the time of collectio

SUBMITTER: Junk I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12507656 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature