JANS Margot

PhD projet : ADNTaxoTroph

Environmental DNA, a quantitative tool for assessing the taxonomic and trophic structure of terrestrial macroinvertebrate communities ?

This PhD project is co-financed by The French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME) and ARGALY.

Objectives : 

The main objectives of this project are (1) to identify the dynamics of soil marking by DNA from macroninvertebrates, (2) to explore and confirm the quantitative nature of the eDNA tool via a direct comparison of taxonomic lists obtained using a morphological vs. molecular approach and (3) to reconstruct trophic webs from eDNA tools and to study the link between the structure of trophic webs (e.g. co-occurrence networks, level of connectivity, etc.) and the resilience of populations (i.e. taxonomic and functional stability) in the face of environmental stressors.

This work will help to improve our knowledge of the quality of DNA traces left by organisms of different taxa in the environment, to link the taxonomic lists obtained by eDNA to functional parameters that can be used to guide the management of the sites in question, and to increase the level of information in sequence databases concerning soil invertebrates.