New Soil DNA Monitoring Technique Provides Data for Better Urban Wildlife Planning. Really!

Again the obsession with the ideology of diversity! 

Notice also the following significant bias by these scientists: Humans disturb the animal communities! This is shoddy science!

I would argue the biggest problem with wildlife in urban areas is overpopulation not loss of biodiversity! From my personal observations here in the Phoenix metro area I would say that e.g. there are way too many birds my neighborhood and that is true for all kinds of bird species. Apparently birds survive and adopt very well in urban areas. I have noticed this all through my life.

"With more than half the world now living in cities and urban land cover expected to increase by about 1.2 million square kilometers by 2030, built environments are altering ecosystems through habitat fragmentations, heat islands, and road networks. Disrupted habitats caused by urbanization can lead to invasive species, disease outbreaks, and increased human-wildlife conflict.

Using eDNA, which captures genetic material shed by organisms into their surroundings, ... scientists tracked how human disturbance is impacting mammal communities. ..."

From the abstract:

"

1. Urban ecosystems are expanding rapidly, significantly altering natural landscapes and impacting biodiversity.
2. Here we explore seasonal variation in mammal diversity using environmental DNA (eDNA) from soil samples collected during winter and summer across 21 urban parks in Detroit, Michigan.
   We estimated gamma (regional), alpha (local) and beta (compositional change) diversity to determine if seasonal shifts, reflecting winter scarcity and summer abundance in mammal community composition and human activity, could be detected using eDNA.
   We expected that larger parks would exhibit greater diversity and higher seasonal turnover, consistent with the species-area relationship (SAR) and hypothesised that increased summer resource availability would lead to decreased network density as species disperse more broadly.
3. We found that urban parks show subtle, park-specific changes in community composition influenced by both ecological and anthropogenic factors, with species including striped skunk, brown rat and groundhog responsible for the observed seasonal variation. Consistent with the SAR, larger parks supported higher species richness and diversity.
   Ecological network analysis, focusing on metrics such as clustering coefficient and network density, revealed a decrease in the overall connectivity and cohesiveness of species interactions from winter to summer, supporting our hypothesis of broader species dispersal during resource-rich periods.
   Notably, human DNA was prevalent in all parks [???], alongside detections of pig and cow eDNA, potentially reflecting human disturbance and anthropogenic food inputs.
4. Our findings underscore the efficacy of eDNA analysis in capturing urban mammal community dynamics, the impact of human activities on biodiversity and its potential as a valuable tool for urban ecological research. Ultimately, enhancing monitoring capacity aids in conservation and urban planning efforts that will promote human-wildlife coexistence and preserve the socio-ecological benefits stemming from biodiversity across cityscapes.

"

New Soil DNA Monitoring Technique Provides Data for Better Urban Wildlife Planning "Yale School of the Environment scientists pioneered  a novel approach to studying the impact of urbanization on biodiversity in cities."

Network dynamics revealed from eDNA highlight seasonal variation in urban mammal communities (open access)

Nyeema Harris, one of the authors