From DNA to ecosystems - The promise of metabarcoding biological archives for biodiversity monitoring
New approaches and data sources are urgently needed to understand historical biodiversity change in the Anthropocene. Recent developments in high throughput DNA metabarcoding hold great promise to provide the needed data. The analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA), DNA traces left by organisms in their environment, has particularly revolutionized biodiversity research. eDNA is preserved in many biological archives, making it possible to trace taxonomic changes at unprecedented temporal detail. I will give an overview of our work using eDNA analysis in biological archives, particularly the German Environmental Specimen Bank (ESB). In the past three decades, the ESB has compiled highly standardized biotic samples from various ecosystems of Germany. In my talk, I will highlight our recent work on the reconstruction of 30-years of temporal changes in biological communities across the tree of life in marine, limnic and terrestrial samples of the ESB.