Urbanization is rapidly expanding along the world's coasts, transforming natural ecosystems into increasingly uniform artificial environments. Yet, the patterns and processes shaping marine biodiversity under urban pressure remain poorly understood. We investigated whether coastal urbanization drives marine communities toward greater similarity, a process well documented in terrestrial and freshwater systems as urban biotic ho...

Riverine floodplains support diverse amphibian communities by providing essential habitats, with lateral hydrological connectivity (LHC or hydrology) determining local environmental conditions. Our study evaluated the direct and indirect effects of LHC on the two most abundant species in a riverine floodplain. We assessed the relative abundance of water frogs ( Pelophylax spp.) and common toads ( Bufo bufo ) using eDNA surveys...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a powerful, non-invasive tool for detecting invasive species at an early stage, even when populations are small or elusive. Its high sensitivity can reveal introductions that might otherwise go unnoticed for decades. Large-scale eDNA surveys of freshwater bivalves across French rivers uncovered the presence of Unio carneus , a mussel species endemic to the Drin Basin in the Balkans and threatened in...

The spread of non-native species threatens biodiversity and exacerbates societal challenges like food security. To address this, effective conservation programs require detection methods that are easy to implement, accurate, and non-invasive. Over the past 15 years, environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques have gained popularity, surpassing traditional sampling methods. In this context, our study focused on tracking the invasive ho...

Arctic fjords are experiencing rapid environmental shifts due to climate change, which may have significant impacts on marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. However, the impact of climate change on fjord biodiversity is difficult to quantify given the low accessibility and high cost to sample these areas. In this study, we sampled locations from inside to outside an Arctic fjord and used environmental DNA metabarcodin...

Monitoring of terrestrial and aquatic species assemblages at large spatial scales based on environmental DNA (eDNA) has the potential to enable evidence-based environmental policymaking. The spatial coverage of eDNA-based studies varies substantially, and the ability of eDNA metabarcoding to capture regional biodiversity remains to be assessed; thus, questions about best practices in the sampling design of entire landscapes re...

Aim Coastal fishes have a fundamental role in marine ecosystem functioning and contributions to people, but face increasing threats due to climate change, habitat degradation and overexploitation. The extent to which human pressures are impacting coastal fish biodiversity in comparison with geographic and environmental factors at large spatial scale is still under scrutiny. Here, we took advantage of environmental DNA (eDNA) m...

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most endangered ecosystem in the world. Understanding how human activities affect these ecosystems requires disentangling and quantifying the contribution of the factors driving community assembly. While it has been largely studied in temperate freshwaters, tropical ecosystems remain challenging to study due to the high species richness and the lack of knowledge on species distribution. Here...

Sturgeon populations are declining worldwide and are the target of extensive conservation efforts. Addressed in several pieces of legislation, sturgeons have received considerable attention as flagship or umbrella species. Despite the need for a better understanding of the distribution and population status, the use of traditional sampling methods failed in the past, thereby hampering reliable assessments, a prerequisite for c...

Assessing the impact of global changes and protection effectiveness is a key step in monitoring marine fishes. Most traditional census methods are demanding or destructive. Nondisturbing and nonlethal approaches based on video and environmental DNA are alternatives to underwater visual census or fishing. However, their ability to detect multiple biodiversity factors beyond traditional taxonomic diversity is still unknown. For...

Theidentification of key biodiversity areas (KBA) was initiated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2004 to overcome taxonomic biases in the selection of important areas for conservation, including freshwater ecosystems. Since then, several KBAs have been identified mainly based on the presence of trigger species (i.e., species that trigger either the vulnerability and or the irreplaceability criterion and...

Macroinvertebrate assemblages are the most common bioindicators used for stream biomonitoring, yet the standard approach exhibits several time‐consuming steps, including the sorting and identification of organisms based on morphological criteria. In this study, we examined if DNA metabarcoding could be used as an efficient molecular‐based alternative to the morphology‐based monitoring of streams using macroinvertebrates. We co...

Metabarcoding of bulk or environmental DNA has great potential for biomonitoring of freshwater environments. However, successful application of metabarcoding to biodiversity monitoring requires universal primers with high taxonomic coverage that amplify highly variable, short metabarcodes with high taxonomic resolution. Moreover, reliable and extensive reference databases are essential to match the outcome of metabarcoding ana...

Declines and extinctions are increasing globally and challenge conservationists to keep pace with biodiversity monitoring. Organisms leave DNA traces in the environment, e.g., in soil, water, and air. These DNA traces are referred to as environmental DNA (eDNA). The analysis of eDNA is a highly sensitive method with the potential to rapidly assess local diversity and the status of threatened species. We searched for DNA traces...