Comparing hair-morphology and molecular methods to identify fecal samples from Neotropical felids.

ABSTRACT: To avoid certain problems encountered with more-traditional and invasive methods in behavioral-ecology studies of mammalian predators, such as felids, molecular approaches have been employed to identify feces found in the field. However, this method requires a complete molecular biology laboratory, and usually also requires very fresh fecal samples to avoid DNA degradation. Both conditions are normally absent in the field. To address these difficulties, identification based on morphological characters (length, color, banding, scales and medullar patterns) of hairs found in feces could be employed as an alternative. In this study we constructed a morphological identification key for guard hairs of eight Neotropical felids (jaguar, oncilla, Geoffroy's cat, margay, ocelot, Pampas cat, puma an

SUBMITTER: Alberts CC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5589158 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature