In a new study, an international research team has shown that cotton swabs, which we all got to know so intimately during the COVID-19 pandemic, are a valuable tool to map biodiversity. The team was led by scientists at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health (HIOH) in Greifswald, a site of the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany.
are where is an important first step for estimating and potentially reducing the risk of infectious disease emergence into human populations.
The research team set off to test this idea in Kibale National Park in Uganda, a place known for its rich animal diversity, and which has attracted biologists for decades. The team ventured into the dense tropical forest armed with 24 cotton buds and the unusual task of swabbing leaves for three minutes with each of them, essentially to clean as many leaves as they could within the timeframe.
The researchers detected an average of nearly eight animal species in each of the cotton buds. These species spanned a huge diversity of mammals and birds from the very large and endangered African elephant to a very small species of sunbird.
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