Futures of Biodiversity Monitoring: Linking eDNA with high-quality reference materials

Environmental DNA (eDNA) has rapidly become a powerful method for large-scale biodiversity assessment and monitoring. Yet the reliability of eDNA data depends on high-quality reference material that can verify detections, resolve taxonomic uncertainty, and correct spatial or temporal biases. This is where global natural science collections, curated in natural history museums, herbaria, and other collection-holding institutes, play an essential role. These collections preserve centuries of information on species, traits, and ecological contexts, providing the authoritative baseline needed to interpret molecular observations and understand biodiversity change over time.

Harnessing this potential requires that collection data be open, reusable, and integrated with emerging molecular approaches. Advances in imaging, computational methods, and molecular analysis have made it possible to link specimen-based knowledge with large-scale datasets. To support such integrated, data-driven research and adaptive conservation strategies, robust infrastructure is needed.

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) – a European Research Infrastructure collaborating with more than 300 institutions across 23 countries – addresses this challenge by representing each specimen as a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) Digital Object. Building on existing standards, each specimen and its associated data are made FAIR, with provenance and trust explicitly encoded. Users can explore connections across data types and contribute annotations, corrections, or additional information, with AI-assisted services such as automated georeferencing, OCR, and morphology detection further enhancing data quality and completeness.

Such linked and verified data provide the critical bridge between historical collections and modern eDNA workflows. Digital specimens data ground eDNA detections in validated reference material, strengthening taxonomic resolution and enabling more accurate interpretation of biodiversity patterns across spatial and temporal scales. Sequencing historical specimens enriches this further by revealing long-term population and ecosystem dynamics.

By establishing an infrastructure capable of linking billions of historical specimen records with emerging molecular and environmental data, DiSSCo creates the conditions for future integration that will support predictive biodiversity assessments and global eDNA efforts.