Hellbender CSI

An article by Carl Zimmer in the NYT last week summarizes the prospect of using "environmental DNA" to detect elusive and endangered species.  An exciting recent example, published in Biological Conservation, employed metagenomics of river water to identify/locate Hellbender salamanders-- although they're huge,  they are difficult to observe in the wild and highly endangered. This provides a nice case study of molecular censusing.