Marta De Barba

1 Introduction Large carnivore ranges have contracted substantially worldwide, driven primarily by human persecution, habitat loss, and habitat fragmentation (Ripple et al. 2014). In Europe and North America, these range contractions have paralleled expanding human populations and land use intensification since the 1700s (Ripple et al. 2014; Zedrosser et al. 2011). Several species have recently reoccupied parts of their former ranges on both continents (Ripple et al. 2014; Chapron et al.

Abstract 1. The current biodiversity crisis demands a shift from single-species to multispecies approaches in conservation, particularly for rare and endangered species. However, this transition requires tools optimised for multispecies research, which are currently limited. 2. Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies and bioinformatics have enabled efficient and robust acquisition of genetic data.

1 INTRODUCTION Environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling and analysis, using organismal DNA extracted from environmental samples (Taberlet et al., 2012), are revolutionizing the way we assess biodiversity, enhancing the scope of ecological investigations and conservation studies (Beng & Corlett, 2020; Cristescu & Hebert, 2018; Deiner et al., 2017, 2021; Taberlet et al., 2018).