Fig. 1: Recovery of human eDNA from field samples.

a, Schematic overview of how human DNA can enter the environment and be inadvertently sequenced as HGB from pathogen- and wildlife-focused eDNA studies. Schematic created with BioRender. b, Whole human genome aligning reads from a wildlife eDNA shotgun Illumina sequencing study. c, qPCR-based species-specific quantification of human eDNA from Avoca River water sampling. The absolute quantity (0.1 ng per μl per reaction) of human eDNA per sample is shown. Each qPCR reaction is a 10 μl reaction containing 1 μl of extracted eDNA template. The samples were quantified with LILRB2 human-specific assays. For filtered water volumes and elution volumes, see Supplementary Table 2. For matching samples quantified with ZNF285 human-specific assays, see Extended Data Fig. 1c. Tukey whiskers (extend to data points that are less than 1.5 × interquartile range (IQR) away from 1st/3rd quartile) were utilized for each boxplot. The median for each sample is shown as a horizontal line within each box, and box edges are the upper and lower quartiles. One box is graphed per single sample, consisting of all qPCR technical replicate wells for that sample. Biological replicates are not pooled on any boxplots, with each sample being denoted by its own box.