La reconnaissance des espèces basée sur l’ADN : applications, perspectives et défis en milieu continental terrestre

In response to ongoing global changes, the challenge of monitoring the dynamics of biodiversity is growing and leads to a strong demand for rapid and detailed assessments of changes in biodiversity. Molecular identification of species is increasingly used to replace or complement more traditional ecological monitoring methods. Metabarcoding is considered a tool for inventorying, learning about biology (predators, prey, pollinators, etc.) and even discovering the history of ecosystems. It can generate biodiversity data quickly, accurately and reliably on a wide range of organisms. This type of methodology is particularly interesting for monitoring systems lacking the expertise to distinguish the many species of hyper diverse groups such as insects or those that are difficult to survey. Species recognition based on DNA from environmental samples (eDNA), such as water, sediments, soil, air, or various biotic materials, has a wide range of applications. Because of its non-invasive and non-destructive nature, these approaches are important for the ethical assessment of biodiversity. Researchers are increasingly incorporating eDNA into their biomonitoring studies because of its accuracy and ease of deployment. In this paper, we provide an overview of the scopes of DNA-based methods for biodiversity monitoring, data acquisition methods, data processing for species classification, and discuss the challenges inherent in each of these steps.