Existing evidence on the use of environmental DNA as an operational method for studying rivers: a systematic map and thematic synthesis

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is the DNA that can be extracted from an environmental sample, enabling the monitoring of whole biological communities across a large number of samples, at a potentially lower cost, which can significantly benefit river conservation. A systematic mapping protocol was designed to investigate the use of eDNA in rivers, specifically in terms of research topics, geographic and taxonomic biases, as well as information gaps. Furthermore, the potential research opportunities of eDNA in rivers and possible paths to find this kind of information on available platforms are identified.