Next-Generation Global Biomonitoring: Large-scale, Automated Reconstruction of Ecological Networks.

We foresee a new global-scale, ecological approach to biomonitoring emerging within the next decade that can detect ecosystem change accurately, cheaply, and generically. Next-generation sequencing of DNA sampled from the Earth's environments would provide data for the relative abundance of operational taxonomic units or ecological functions. Machine-learning methods would then be used to reconstruct the ecological networks of interactions implicit in the raw NGS data. Ultimately, we envision the development of autonomous samplers that would sample nucleic acids and upload NGS sequence data to the cloud for network reconstruction. Large numbers of these samplers, in a global array, would allow sensitive automated biomonitoring of the Earth's major ecosystems at high spatial and temporal resolution, revolutionising our understanding of ecosystem change.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Trends in Ecology & Evolution

• Publication date

  2017-07-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Computer Science, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.tree.2017.03.001PMID 28359573
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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