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However, the analysis of eDNA from humans or forensic DNA, presents significant challenges, including low coverage, DNA degradation, and the uncertainty of the number of individuals contributing to a sample. This study introduces CHARON, a novel statistical method for jointly estimating the number of individuals and drift times between a human eDNA or forensic sample and a given population with known allele frequencies. We validate our method through simulations and synthetic empirical data and show that we can reliably estimate the number of individuals up to 8 at a coverage between 2X and 4X. Our method can also pinpoint the most likely population of origin for eDNA or forensic samples. This work provides a tool for the application of human eDNA in evolutionary and forensic studies and an implementation is available here: https:\/\/github.com\/Jan-van-Waaij\/Charon.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/g3journal\/jkag099","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,13]],"date-time":"2026-05-13T04:31:16Z","timestamp":1778646676000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["CHARON: estimating the drift time and the number of individuals in environmental DNA with diploid individuals"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8738-5377","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jan","family":"van Waaij","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Health Technology, Section for Bioinformatics, Technical University of Denmark , \u00d8rsteds Plads, Building 345C, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800 ,","place":["Denmark"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Mads Vodder","family":"Hartmann","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Health Technology, Section for Bioinformatics, Technical University of Denmark , \u00d8rsteds Plads, Building 345C, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800 ,","place":["Denmark"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Peter Wad","family":"Sackett","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Health Technology, Section for Bioinformatics, Technical University of Denmark , \u00d8rsteds Plads, Building 345C, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800 ,","place":["Denmark"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0630-027X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Gabriel","family":"Renaud","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Health Technology, Section for Bioinformatics, Technical University of Denmark , \u00d8rsteds Plads, Building 345C, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800 ,","place":["Denmark"]},{"name":"Universit\u00e9 Laval Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, , Qu\u00e9bec City, Qu\u00e9bec ,","place":["Canada"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,12]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026070604325628000_jkag099-B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"68","DOI":"10.1038\/nature15393","article-title":"A global reference for human genetic variation","volume":"526","author":"1000 Genomes Project Consortium","year":"2015","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"2026070604325628000_jkag099-B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e01504\u201319","DOI":"10.1128\/AEM.01504-19","article-title":"The future of environmental DNA in forensic science","volume":"86","author":"Allwood","year":"2020","journal-title":"Appl Environ Microbiol"},{"key":"2026070604325628000_jkag099-B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2089","DOI":"10.1007\/s10531-020-01980-0","article-title":"Applications of environmental DNA (eDNA) in 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