U.S. Geological Survey

Sea lamprey lose the gall bladder and bile ducts during metamorphosis, a process similar to human biliary atresia. A new fixation and clarification method (CLARITY) was modified to visualize the entire biliary tree using laser scanning confocal microscopy. This method provides a powerful tool to study biliary degeneration.

Repeated soil sampling has recently been shown to be an effective way to monitor forest soil change over years and decades. To support its use, a protocol is presented that synthesizes the latest information on soil resampling methods to aid in the design and implementation of successful soil monitoring programs.

The health of wild fishes can be used as an indicator of aquatic ecosystem health. Necropsy-based fish health assessments provide documentation of visible lesions or abnormalities, data used to calculate condition indices as well as the opportunity to collect tissues for microscopic evaluation, gene expression and other more in-depth analyses.

Accurately measuring temperature and water content of the upper 5 mm of the soil surface can improve our understanding of environmental controls on biological, chemical, and physical processes. Here we describe a protocol for manufacturing, calibrating, and conducting measurements with soil surface temperature and moisture sensors.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) is typically captured from water samples using alcohol precipitation, filtration, or flocculation. Presented here is an alternative protocol that uses lanthanum chloride to enable collection of dissolved and particulate-bound nucleic acids from water samples containing eukaryotic cells, prokaryotic cells, and virus.

Environmental DNA assays require rigorous design, testing, optimization and validation before the collection of field data can begin. Here, we present a protocol to take users through each step of designing a species-specific, probe-based qPCR assay for the detection and quantification of a target species DNA from environmental samples.

The determination of soil water content is a critical mission requirement for many state and federal agencies. This protocol synthesizes multi-agency efforts to measure soil water content using buried in situ sensors.