Animal and plant DNA are literally in the air. An already existing system could help researchers catch it, potentially unleashing decades of biodiversity data.
The ability to track animals and plants is up in the air — literally — thanks to help from an unexpected source.
“It’s this incredible system that already exists, and we’re effectively piggybacking on it for a totally new use,” says Elizabeth Clare, a molecular ecologist at York University in Toronto. The facilities are widespread across North and Central America, Europe and Asia but are less dense in the global South.
Clare, Allerton and colleagues analyzed filters from the Teddington facility that were exposed to ambient air for one hour, one day or one week. The team also examined eight-month-old filters from an air quality control station in Scotland that had each been exposed to air for a week. The filters detected plenty of plant life, even on disks exposed to air for only an hour. Birds and mammals, on the other hand, were more likely to pop up in samples taken for longer periods of time. That’s probably because trees are stationary while animals are constantly moving around, so it takes more time to detect them, Clare says.
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