The Tara Microplastics mission was conducted for 7 months to investigate plastic pollution along nine major rivers in Europe—Thames, Elbe, Rhine, Seine, Loire, Garonne, Ebro, Rhone, and Tiber. An extensive suite of sampling protocols was applied at four to five sites on each river along a salinity gradient from the sea and the outer estuary to downstream and upstream of the first heavily populated city. Biophysicochemical para...

Aim Intensive studies since the beginning of the 21st century have provided vast amounts of knowledge about soil microbial diversity at local and global scales. However, microbial habitats have been poorly investigated at large scale. This study aims to characterize soil bacterial habitats across France for the first time by integrating the description of numerous environmental factors and human activities. Location We focus o...

Ecosystems across the globe are threatened by climate change and human activities. New rapid survey approaches for monitoring biodiversity would greatly advance assessment and understanding of these threats. Taking advantage of next‐generation DNA sequencing, we tested an approach we call metabarcoding: high‐throughput and simultaneous taxa identification based on a very short (usually