Environomics FSP Phase 2 - Passive eDNA Collection Enabling Species Detection and Quantification

Brief description Environmental DNA metabarcoding methods are a cost-effective and powerful tool for biodiversity surveying in aquatic environments, but they are limited to determining the presence or absence of species near the sites where water is sampled by filtering. eDNA metabarcoding is currently unable to estimate species abundance, or residence at specific sites. This project will develop passive eDNA collection methods, eliminating the filtration step, and enabling large scale deployment that can be used for quantitative analyses of species abundance. The final product will be a pre-packaged passive eDNA sampling device that will be cheap and easily deployed on large scales.