Environmental DNA (eDNA) is genetic material that is found in an environment and derived from organisms living in that habitat. Researchers have recently been using eDNA to detect the presence of macro-organisms, particularly those living in an aquatic environment. The use of eDNA is, however, not necessarily limited to aquatic/semiaquatic vertebrates, because terrestrial animals also must have frequent opportunities to maintain their lives, implying that eDNA originating from those animals should be detectable from places containing water in terrestrial ecosystems (e.g., a pond in a forest).

Indeed, recent studies have shown that terrestrial animals, e.g., mammals, insects and birds, can be detected from water samples taken from terrestrial ecosystems. For example, MiMammal primers (Ushio et al. 2017 Molecular Ecology Resources), which target a short fragment in the mitochondrial 12S region, enabled detection of terrestrial mammals from forest pond water. Also, MiBird primers (Ushio et al. 2017 bioRxiv) enabled detection of avian species from a natural pond. These studies have demonstrated that eDNA analysis is potentially a useful tool to monitor biodiversity even in terrestrial ecosystems.

In this presentation, I would like to explain an experimental and analytical workflow of eDNA analysis of terrestrial animals, and discuss its potential advantages and limitations.