A team of researchers from the University of Trier and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology conducted
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is left behindin the natural environment by spiders and other arthropods. They may leave saliva behind when they chew or defecate. This leaves a small amount of DNA that researchers can find using techniques developed over the past few years.
For example, scientists identify parts of DNA strandswhich are common to a specific group of organisms, such as arthropods. In the new work, the researchers used this approach to separate insect eDNA from plant DNA. They then treated the samples in the water from which the eDNA was obtained. Then they studied the eDNA to determine their source.
Biologists studied 40 tea samples and found tracesDNA that shouldn't be there. Namely, eDNA of more than 1,200 species of arthropods, including predators and herbivores, as well as detritivores and parasitoids. It turned out that each sample contains eDNA from at least 200 creatures, and green tea contains the most of them.
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