Remote locations, rugged topography, extreme weather conditions, high numbers of threatened and endangered taxa, and widespread degradation of native ecosystems by invasive species makes routine monitoring to determine status and trends of ecosystems and native and invasive taxa difficult and expensive in the Hawaiian Islands. There is a need to supplement existing monitoring protocols with more cost effective methods that can monitor both individual taxa and entire communities of organisms of interest across larger geographic areas. Recent advances in methodologies for detecting environmental DNA (eDNA) from water and soil are promising and may have applications in Hawaii for monitoring native communities, rare taxa, and high impact invasive species… Read More