I am currently working on developing techniques to isolate eDNA from air and moss for terrestrial biodiversity monitoring.
Particularly with airborne eDNA I am investigating the optimal sampling parameters to capture high amounts of vertebrate DNA and detect diverse communities.
With Moss accumulated eDNA I am interested in examining the potential of using moss (bryophytes) as natural traps of eDNA for terrestrial biodiversity monitoring. We are still at the beginning of the project and looking for MSc students who are interested in exploring and optimizing different methodological approaches to detect biodiversity using moss samples. In this project we aim to characterise vertebrate, invertebrate and microbial communities using MiSeq amplicon sequencing.