DOI: 10.5061/dryad.05qfttfbs
title: Data from: Koalas, friends, and foes – the application of airborne eDNA for the biomonitoring of threatened species

description:  Perched high up in a Eucalyptus tree, swaying from side to side,
 lies a sleepy koala unaware of the means spent each year trying to obtain
 accurate baseline information about its presence. We have thrown all we
 could at it, from wildlife surveys to night spotting, bioacoustics,
 detection dogs, and drones equipped with thermal cameras. Yet, whilst
 critical to its conservation and management efforts, finding a koala
 remains an ambitious, time-consuming, and costly endeavour often producing
 insufficient results. Little did we know that traces of koalas’ presence
 and that of its predators along with other native, domesticated, and
 invasive species, float in the air and can be detected through traces of
 DNA. This study confirms that koalas alongside species belonging to the
 wallaby, possum family, invasive species such as foxes, domestic dogs and
 rabbits can successfully be detected by sampling airborne particles. We
 detected 16 unique taxonomic assignments through sampling of airborne
 particles, successfully assigning 11 of these to species level. Further,
 we develop and employ a novel koala-specific qPCR for the cost-effective
 detection of koala eDNA in the wild. Together, this study demonstrates the
 potential of airborne eDNA for the detection of threatened terrestrial
 wildlife under natural conditions and presents achievable optimisation
 steps to increase its field applicability and validity.
description: # Koalas, friends, and foes – the application of airborne eDNA for the
 biomonitoring of threatened species
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.05qfttfbs](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.05qfttfbs) ## Description of the data and file structure Supplementary data.xlsx | Table 1 | | | :---------- | :-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Tab title | ASVs | | Description | Fasta format sequences for all ASVs called from the DADA2 pipeline | | | | | Table 2 | | | Tab title | AusMammalPriors | | Description | Fasta formatted sequences of (16S amplicons for trget primer) Australian Mammal reference genomes used as priors for DADA2 pipeline | | | | | Table 3 | | | Tab title | qPCR species | | Description | list of species with reference mitochondrial genomes used in initial development of koala specific qPCR assay  | | | In addition to NCBI BLAST this list was used to ensure our primers did not amplify species other than koala | | Table 4 | | | Tab title | Fauna | | Description | Species detected across each location  during fauna transects run in parallel to eDNA filter deployment. Location accuracy to patch level - as per Dryad policy. Please contact authors for raw GPS data. | | | | | Table 5 | | | Tab title | Koala Mito Genomes | | Description | List of Mitochondrial genomes used to develop the koala specific qPCR assay | | | | | Table 6 | | | Tab title | Reference ASVs | | Description | Reference sequences and their NCBI accession number included in the construction of the phylogenetic tree (Figure 3 in text).  | | | | | Table 7 | | | Tab title | ASV Read Abundance | | Description | The abundance of sequences for each ASV  and their taxonomic assignments for each site at the four sampling locations | ## Code/Software Code used to analyse raw fastq files - including trimming adapters, generative amplicon sequence variants, and taxonomic assignment.