<p>Three winners have been selected in the 2023 <a href="https://www.aibs.org/faces-of-biology/">Faces of Biology Photo Contest</a>, sponsored by the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB). </p>
May 3, 2021
Editor’s note: The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Today’s piece is by Jessica Alice Farrell, University of Florida; David Duffy, University of Florida, and Liam Whitmore, University of Limerick.
(THE CONVERSATION) Imagine discovering an animal species you thought had gone extinct was still living – without laying eyes on it. Such was the case with the Brazilian frog species Megaelosia bocainensis, whose complete disappearance in 1968 led scientists to believe it had become extinct. But through a novel genetic detection technique, it was rediscovered in 2020.
Such discoveries are now possible thanks to a new approach that recovers and reads the trace amounts of DNA released into the environment by animals. It’s called environmental DNA, or eDNA – and it takes advantage of the fact that every animal sheds DNA into its environment via skin, hair, scales, feces or bodily fluids as it