• Dhar@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    “How much DNA do salamanders absorb from the environment, and how much of that gets incorporated into their DNA?” I would assume.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      WHAT?

      eDNA is the idea of taking a environmental sample like water or air, and finding traces of DNA and figuring out what creatures live in the area. you wouldn’t take a sample from an animal mouth to check for eDNA.

      you could tell what salamanders live in a pond by getting eDNA from the water, but no real point in checking the DNA in the salamander mouth.

      maybe to double check results for testing.

      • Asidonhopo@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I’d be pretty impressed if salamanders readily incorporated environmental transposons into their genome. Don’t octopuses rewrite their genetics on the fly though? I think I remember reading something about that years ago