Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment is a benefit of membership of the Ecological Society of America. International in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, Frontiers focuses on current ecological issues and environmental challenges. Frontiers is aimed at professional ecologists and scientists working in related disciplines.
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Molecular detection techniques can be used in species monitoring, pathogen surveillance, dietary analysis, and a variety of other ecological applications. In the February 2020 issue of Frontiers, Mosher et al. present a communication framework that can help to guide collaborative partnerships between laboratory scientists, resource managers, and ecologists who employ these techniques.

In Antarctica, ice-free habitats occupy less than 1% of the continent’s terrestrial extent but nevertheless harbor eukaryotic biodiversity, which has been largely understudied due to logistical constraints. However, a novel combination of methods – repeated lasso regression linking environmental DNA traces with soil properties – has shown promise as a relatively easy and cost-effective means to predict the presence of phyla based on selected geochemical properties of soil samples, such as pH. In the December issue of Frontiers, Czechowski et al. share how the probability of detecting tardigrades (phylum Tardigrada) was higher in the absence of alkaline substrates, for instance, at sites in the Prince Charles Mountains. By establishing such biotic–abiotic relationships, this approach can help to inform future surveys for, and conservation of, Antarctic taxa.