There's Something in the Air

Establishing the presence or absence of certain elusive animals can be problematic. Animals can be easily disturbed by direct observation. If animals cannot be directly observed, one has to rely on techniques such as camera traps or acoustic monitoring. All such approaches require close proximity to the animal. Teams in the UK and Denmark may have independently developed a solution ( https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/08/dna-from-thin-air-a-new-way-to-detect-rare-wildlife-in-hostile-environments). The teams both fitted sensitive filters to vacuum pumps and set them up in locations around zoos (Hamerton Zoo Park in Cambridgeshire and Copenhagen Zoo, respectively). Material from the filters was then subjected to the Polymerase Chain Reaction technique to amplify fragments of animal DNA from the air. Both groups managed to detect DNA from a range of animals. They not only knew which species were present but how far the animals were from the vacuum pumps. The British group mainly detected DNA from tigers, dingos and lemurs. The group in Copenhagen also detected DNA from Mammals. They also, however, identified DNA from birds, reptiles and fish (guppies in ponds) in the Copenhagen Zoo. The technique may be useful for assessing biodiversity in locations that are hard to access (jungles, caves etc). It depends, of course, on having the DNA sequences of potential species on record. Although that information is growing, it is far from complete. In the Zoo studies, the teams knew which species to look for. A downside of the technique is that some species may be driven from the locality by the sounds of the vacuum pumps.