Filters at air-pollution monitoring stations trap DNA from a multitude of flora and fauna, researchers find.
The advantage of using existing air-monitoring stations is that this infrastructure is already set up in many countries around the world, including across North and Central America, Europe, Asia and the Southern Hemisphere, the researchers say. They urge monitoring-station operators to preserve filters after air-quality analysis so ecologists can use them.
“Until we truly understand their ecological value, we’ve got to stop throwing them away,” Clare says. Researchers retrieved wildlife DNA from the Auchencorth Moss air-quality monitoring station near Edinburgh.Eily Allan, a molecular biologist and chief scientist of the eDNA Collaborative, a research programme at the University of Washington in Seattle, says the automated collection of airborne eDNA using existing networks of air-monitoring stations could “push environmental monitoring into the twenty-first century”.
But before the monitoring method can be rolled out widely, researchers need to work out some details, including the optimal sampling time to ensure broad eDNA collection. The team says its data suggest that a day is too short for sampling, but a week is too long — there is a sweet spot between collecting enough DNA and keeping it for so long that the material degrades.
Other unknowns include how far eDNA travels in air, which will determine how large an area this method can monitor. Study co-author Joanne Littlefair, a molecular ecologist at Queen Mary University of London, says the team is also still working out what ecological information eDNA can provide beyond identifying species. For example, she suggests it is unlikely that the method will be able to measure species abundance.
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