AI Article Synopsis
- Ecological communities are constantly changing, but understanding long-term dynamics (over centuries to millennia) is challenging due to a lack of data.
- Environmental DNA (eDNA) offers a promising tool for studying these long-term ecological changes and understanding current biodiversity by providing insights into the history of populations and ecosystems.
- The paper discusses potential research questions that can be explored using eDNA, suggests future research directions, and highlights challenges in leveraging this new data source.
Article Abstract
Ecological communities change in time and space, but long-term dynamics at the century-to-millennia scale are poorly documented due to lack of relevant data sets. Nevertheless, understanding long-term dynamics is important for explaining present-day biodiversity patterns and placing conservation goals in a historical context. Here, we use recent examples and new perspectives to highlight how environmental DNA (eDNA) is starting to provide a powerful new source of temporal data for research questions that have so far been overlooked, by helping to resolve the ecological dynamics of populations, communities, and ecosystems over hundreds to thousands of years. We give examples of hypotheses that may be addressed by temporal eDNA biodiversity data, discuss possible research directions, and outline related challenges.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.09.003 | DOI Listing |
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