Simon Creer

TL;DR: The use of eDNA metabarcoding for surveying animal and plant richness, and the challenges in using eDNA approaches to estimate relative abundance are reviewed, which distill what is known about the ability of different eDNA sample types to approximate richness in space and across time.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the current frontiers of eDNA, outline key aspects requiring improvement, and suggest future developments and innovations for research, including improved ability to explore ecosystem-level processes, the generation of quantitative indices for analyses of species, community diversity, and dynamics, and novel opportunities through the use of time-serial samples and unprecedented sensitivity for detecting rare or difficult-to-sample taxa.

TL;DR: The current frontiers of eDNA are examined, key aspects requiring improvement are outlined, and future developments and innovations for research are suggested.

TL;DR: Despite a promising outlook, the field of eukaryotic marker gene surveys faces significant challenges: how to generate data that are most useful to the community, especially in the face of evolving sequencing technologies and bioinformatics pipelines, and how to incorporate an expanding number of target genes.

TL;DR: Second-generation sequencing is used to unmask putatively diverse marine metazoan biodiversity in a Scottish temperate benthic ecosystem and refute currently accepted ecological and taxonomic paradigms of meiofaunal identity, rank abundance and concomitant understanding of trophic dynamics.