eDNA detects invasive snake in Florida 

Environmental DNA can help researchers find invasive snakes in Florida, aiding in removal efforts. Scientists are increasingly using environmental DNA—or eDNA—to detect individual species in a given area from samples of water, air or soil. But a new method is allowing scientists to detect four invasive species at the same time with just one sample of soil or water. Researchers developed the DNA test to detect Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus), northern African pythons (P. sebae), boa constrictors (Boa constrictor) and rainbow boas (Epicrates cenchria). “While eDNA sampling has been applied to detect non-native wildlife, the benefit of our methodology is that we can now sample for numerous target species within a single sample,” said Melissa Miller, an invasion ecologist at the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center. “This can aid natural resource managers by reducing costs required to survey for non-native species in multi-invaded ecosystems.” Miller led a study showing the accuracy of the method published in Ecology and Evolution. She said with this testing, managers can monitor species and apply removal strategies.  

Read the study in Ecology and Evolution.