fundamentals of eDNA

What I found to be interesting about Deiner et al. (2016) and Foote et al. (2012) is how these papers, while relatively “old” in the environmental DNA field, have similar conclusions to what we are still reporting today. Specifically for the Deiner et al. paper, while it focuses on different protocols tested than what we are currently looking into, the overall conclusion has remained true - different methods yield different results, though how those results vary and impact your conclusion is purely based on your organism(s) of study. While seemingly a large number of experiments similar to this one has been carried out (whether published or not), there does not seem to be a universal answer to conveinently point to. Regarding the Foote et al. paper, while the idea of using only 15mL of water to test for occurrence of a specific species now may seem like a wildly small amount, especially in a marine setting, it’s interesting to see what methods were used early on in the development of eDNA research and how they have evolved over the years - showing you that while there may not be an agreed upon universal answer, there has been progress in method development.