Revolution in conserving and detecting biodiversity: Environmental DNA (eDNA) technique

Nature's unique mechanisms hold the key to some promising strategies. In particular, nature's self-cleaning mechanism against pollution burdens both protects ecosystems and prevents the degradation of biodiversity. Although Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a new concept today, it represents DNA obtained from any environmental sample. That is, it includes DNA collected from different ecosystems without an isolated organism, originating from body cells or organism waste. eDNA studies have gained popularity in the last decade. This popularity is due to the fact that the eDNA technique never harms any ecosystem or biodiversity (including endemic species in water and soil ecosystems). Its environmental friendliness makes eDNA an efficient biomonitoring technique compared to traditional methods. Traditional monitoring methods include the visual identification or manual collection of organisms. The main disadvantages of these methods compared to eDNA are cost and time. eDNA is a revolutionary method for studying biodiversity in water and soil ecosystems. It is also used by environmental scientists to monitor living bio-indicators in cases of pollution in receiving water and soil environments. This review aims to review the literature on 'Environmental DNA (eDNA)' from different international scientific databases and to discuss the applicability and effectiveness of eDNA in the field of biodiversity.