Environmental DNA for functional diversity

Abstract Chapter 10 “Environmental DNA for functional diversity” discusses the potential of environmental DNA to assess functional diversity. It first focuses on DNA metabarcoding and discusses the extent to which this approach can be used and/or optimized to retrieve meaningful information on the functions of the target community. This knowledge usually involves coarsely defined functional groups (e.g., woody, leguminous, graminoid plants; shredders or decomposer soil organisms; pathogenicity or decomposition role of certain microorganisms). Chapter 10 then introduces metagenomics and metatranscriptomics approaches, their advantages, but also the challenges and solutions to appropriately sampling, sequencing these complex DNA/RNA populations. Chapter 10 finally presents several strategies and software to analyze metagenomes/metatranscriptomes, and discusses their pros and cons.