The ability to track animals and plants is up in the air — literally — thanks to help from an unexpected source.
Around the globe, many air quality control stations filter air through small paper disks on a daily or weekly basis, allowing scientists to ensure concentrations of hazardous pollutants such as heavy metals are below certain levels. But the filters also pick up plant and animal DNA that has been scattered into the wind, researchers report June 5 in Current Biology.
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