How rain can reveal what lives in rainforest treetops Perched high above the forest floor, the tropical canopy is a reservoir of biodiversity that has long resisted scrutiny. Its inaccessibility has left many of its inhabitants — orchids, epiphytes, ants, monkeys, frogs — poorly studied and poorly protected. But a new study offers a workaround: let the rain do the climbing. Scientists led by Lucie Zinger at the France-based Center for Biodiversity and Environmental Research (CBRE) have shown that water dripping from the canopy carries traces of DNA, or environmental DNA (eDNA), from the organisms above. By capturing and analyzing this “rainwash” in low-tech collectors, they identified hundreds of species across plants, insects, birds, amphibians, and mammals. The plants and animals detecte

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