10/17/2014

Environmental Detectives Use Genetic Tools to Track Invasives

10:38 minutes

Hunting for invasive species in the Great Lakes isn’t an easy task, because it’s incredibly hard to track organisms living underwater. But David Lodge, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative, says a recently developed technique called “environmental DNA” allows invasive species trackers to get a time-sensitive fingerprint of which species are living where—including underwater. Today, the tool is used to find marauding species all over the world.

Segment Guests

David Lodge

David Lodge is a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the director of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Meet the Producer

About Christopher Intagliata

Christopher Intagliata was Science Friday’s senior producer. He once served as a prop in an optical illusion and speaks passable Ira Flatowese.