Anna MacDonaldI'm a biologist with interests in genetics, conservation, ecology, invasive species, and wildlife management. Archives
May 2019
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Click here to read the full post at WildlifeSNPits
As many people know, two of my favourite topics are bandicoots and environmental DNA (eDNA). So I’m very excited about the online debut of my latest paper “A framework for developing and validating taxon-specific primers for specimen identification from environmental DNA” at Molecular Ecology Resources, which includes both bandicoots and eDNA. eDNA analysis is the analysis of DNA from environmental samples, which can include soil, water and animal faeces. eDNA studies can make valuable contributions to wildlife management, including management of invasive species, and conservation. Some animals are elusive, so relying on direct observations alone may not provide a true picture of where these species occur or which habitats they prefer to spend time in. eDNA detection, in conjunction with physical trapping, camera traps, and other survey data, has potential to improve our understanding of wildlife distributions. We may also want to learn about interactions between different species: predator-prey interactions are one example. This is where scat DNA is especially useful, as we can detect DNA from food remains in scats from a wide range of animals, including predators and herbivores. However… if we are going to use eDNA to guide management actions, which often require considerable investments of time and resources, we need to make sure that our eDNA studies are well-designed and reliable. Many eDNA tests use PCR and DNA sequencing methods to detect a single species or a group of closely-related species. These rely on the development of species-specific or taxon-specific PCR primers. We need to be confident that these primers will reproducibly detect the target species AND that they won’t also detect DNA from other wildlife that will be mistaken for the target species...
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Click here to read the full post at WildlifeSNPits
Bandicoots are fascinating creatures, but I suspect few people outside Australia and New Guinea have ever heard of them, well, unless you count Crash Bandicoot… They are probably best known in suburban Australia for infuriating gardeners with the conical pits, or “snout-pokes”, they dig whilst foraging for their food, which varies a little among species but usually includes fungi, plants and invertebrates. All Australian bandicoots are diggers, and a recent study estimated that a single southern brown bandicoot could dig as many as 45 foraging pits each day, meaning it has the potential to excavate around 3.9 tonnes of soil each year! That’s not bad for an animal that weighs less than 2 kilograms. In the not too distant past, bandicoots and their relatives could be found across almost the entire Australian continent, but theirs has been a sad story of extinction and decline since Europeans arrived. Today, thanks to habitat loss, competition from introduced rabbits, and predation by introduced cats and foxes (check out this camera trap photo, captured by Guy Ballard, of a feral cat with a bandicoot), many populations have diminished or disappeared. This may have real implications for the ecology of Australia: digging mammals seem to have important roles in soil turnover, water and nutrient cycling, and seedling recruitment, and the decline of these little diggers may have caused a deterioration in ecosystem function across the Australian continent. There is an awful lot more I could share about bandicoot ecology and evolution, but for now I want to concentrate on explaining what a bandicoot is, how many species there are, and where in the world they are found. I hope you’ll agree with me that as well as being amazingly cute (the official term is “bandicute”) they are also amazingly interesting... |