if I was a reviewer I would make them change the terms. they went for eDNA in the soil, but they also called it eDNA when collecting from skin swab, which by definition, isn't eDNA (unless you're trying to detect organisms that are in contact with the salamander). they are at best controls or sample confirmations. but I won't call it eDNA.
However, I've had to review papers much worse than this. I'm only arguing semantics here, interesting paper though.
eDNA is the idea of taking a environmental sample like water or air, and finding traces of DNA and figuring out what creatures live in the area. you wouldn't take a sample from an animal mouth to check for eDNA.
you could tell what salamanders live in a pond by getting eDNA from the water, but no real point in checking the DNA in the salamander mouth.
Eh, until we're truly a post scarcity society (if such a thing is even possible) scientist would have to justify use of resources no matter what the system we use.
You use resources you have to justify them. Maybe to a voluntary committee. Maybe to a Soviet. Maybe to the supreme leaders appointee. Maybe to a sub unit of the technocratic cabal.
My wife and many of her friends are in medical fields, while myself and several of their spouses are in technical fields. We've had almost exactly the same exchanges.
Even in medicine, there are big blind spots between specialties. My radiologist who did my wife’s sonogram was like “yeah I got into this because I fucking hate needles. If I wanted to go into nursing I’d need to use them a lot. So here I am, doing all of the non-invasive stuff instead.”
Searching for it I mainly got Dame Edna Average and while she looks a bit like a salamander that didn't seem right.
I was immediately thinking about all the different prefixes for RNA and eDNA did not make any sense. Maybe "expressed DNA" but that's just the transcriptome and that also RNA again.
measuring cell stress (literally how much you can deform a cell) as a factor that can influence its development is a bit of a hot crossover field in Physics and Biology atm
I worked on that a bit! Never realized it had such a crossover potential. Also considering how physicists cant stand biologists and probably vice versa.