The Machines Finding Life That Humans Can't See

A suite of technologies are helping taxonomists speed up species identification. Listen to more stories on the Noa app. Across a Swiss meadow and into its forested edges, the drone dragged a jumbo-size cotton swab from a 13-foot tether. Along its path, the moistened swab collected scraps of life: some combination of sloughed skin and hair; mucus, saliva, and blood splatters; pollen flecks and fungal spores. Later, biologists used a sequencer about the size of a phone to stream the landscape's DNA into code, revealing dozens upon dozens of species, some endangered, some invasive.