The scientists’ blood-sucking accomplices
What’s the News: Scientists searching for new and endangered species in tropical highlands face a Catch 22. Spotting shy creatures is the order of the day, but bushwhacking through forests is anything but subtle. How can you get a sense of what’s there when you can’t get close enough to see it?
Environmental DNA analysis is one of the answers—checking out the DNA in soil, for instance, can reveal what pooped there recently in amazing detail. But for a technique that can reach beyond a given patch of ground, scientists have been investigating using leeches from streamwater as their source of DNA. It turns out that blood from their last meal sticks around in their gut for a good long time, and they happen to be partial to human blood too—which makes them, in the scientists’ words, “easy to collect.” A new papergives proof that the ...
