Using environmental data to improve great crested newt surveying.

This feasibility project will apply cutting edge next generation DNA sequencing methodologies (NGS) to ecological surveys with specific reference to an endangered UK amphibian, the Great Crested Newt (GCN). GCN are a protected species which makes it an offence to move or kill them, or disrupt their habitat. As such land that is earmarked for re-development and with potential to harbour GCN populations (ponds) will need to be surveyed for GCN. This can be a costly process and one that delays the development of land. The proposed methodology to be evaluated within this study has the potential to not only survey this species, but all animal species within a particular ecosystem, in paralell, by analysis of the trace amounts of environmental DNA (eDNA) which had been released into that environment from the sloughing of cellular material from the animals within that ecosystem. eDNA monitoring by NGS will allow cost-effective species monitoring in environmental surveys, with potentially greater sensitivity than those surveys that are currently carried out by conventional trapping/sighting methodologies.