![]() 'Prof Stefano Mariani from the University of Salford contacted me on Twitter saying that, as he works on eDNA and I work on sponges, we could join forces to try it out.' Natural filters 'It is a very cool idea that was actually brought up via Twitter,' explains Ana. Publishing their results in Cell Press, Museum researcher Dr Ana Riesgo Gil and her colleagues identified up to 31 different species of vertebrates based on the eDNA trapped within samples of sponges collected in Antarctica and the Mediterranean. This can often be an expensive technique, but researchers have discovered something that might help: sponges. The theory goes that by sampling ocean water, filtering out these cells and then analysing the DNA held within, researchers can build a picture of which animals are living in an environment at any one time. ![]() ![]() The last decade or so has seen a growing interest in what is called environmental DNA, or eDNA for short.Īs animals move through soil or water, they invariably shed cells and bits of tissue that contain their DNA. ![]() Deep-sea rovers can only tell researchers about what is going on in an environment at that specific moment, when the sea floor is illuminated. Some whales dive deep and rarely surface. None of these techniques, however, are perfect. For whales and dolphins this is done through surface observations, while fish are collected in nets, and sponges and echinoderms can be sampled using deep-sea rovers. Ocean surveys are done by a variety of methods depending on the group of plants or animals in question. ![]() To protect the oceans, scientists, conservationists and policy makers need to know what is living there. ![]()
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