Wilderlab is an award-winning environmental DNA (eDNA) testing laboratory in Wellington NZ. Through the development of user-friendly eDNA sampling kits and a fast and reliable sequencing service, Wilderlab has catalyzed an exponential uptake of eDNA monitoring across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Wilderlab offers robust and sensitive eDNA tools for a wide range of monitoring needs, including threatened species detection, biosecurity surveillance, environmental impact assessments, ecosystem health evaluation and science education.
With Wilderlab’s technology, anyone can make exciting and meaningful discoveries with eDNA!
What is eDNA?
Environmental DNA is genetic material that is shed by organisms as they move in, through, and around their environment. By isolating this material from different reservoirs such as waterways, we can gain valuable insights into the distribution of species through time and space, more sensitively monitor biosecurity threats, and better understand and track fluctuations in ecosystem health.
What’s more, you aren’t needing to capture and identify all of the organisms that you are wanting to monitor, making it faster, safer, and less time consuming than some traditional survey methods. The rapid growth of eDNA-based monitoring reflects its ease and cost-effectiveness enabling the growth of scale and depth of environmental monitoring in Aotearoa New Zealand.
We can identify thousands of species of fish, macroinvertebrates, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, plants, fungi, protists, bacteria, and other organisms. All of this from just a cup or two of water!!
Simplified sampling
EASY
Our sampling kits are portable, simple to use and require no specialist training. On-site syringe filtration avoids the need to carry bottles of water or bulky equipment, and our convenient preservation system means that small and lightweight eDNA samples can be stored at room temperature and shipped by standard post or courier to our Wellington laboratory for testing.
FAST
On-site filtration and processing takes around 5 minutes per sample, and the self-contained kits enable teams to process multiple samples simultaneously. This high-throughput sampling approach maximises target species detection probability while minimising time and and travel costs.
RELIABLE
Encapsulated filters minimise the risk of contamination between samples, which can lead to erroneous results and jeopardise management success. Our kits are also designed to provide consistent results between users, meaning that results are directly comparable regardless of who collected the samples.
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Freshwater eDNA package (NZFAP approved)
Precision testing services
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