Airborne eDNA captures three decades of ecosystem biodiversity.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity loss threatens ecosystems and human well-being, making accurate, large-scale monitoring crucial. Environmental DNA (eDNA) has enabled species detection from substrates such as water, without the need for direct observation. Lately, airborne eDNA has been showing promise for tracking organisms from insects to mammals in terrestrial ecosystems. Conventional biodiversity assessments are often labor-intensive and limited in scope, leaving gaps in our understanding of ecosystem response to environmental change. Here, we demonstrate that airborne eDNA can detect organisms across the tree of life, quantify changes in abundance congruent with traditional monitoring, and reveal land-use induced regional decline of diversity in a northern boreal ecosystem over more than three decades. B

SUBMITTER: Sullivan AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12717267 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature