Demonstration of the potential of environmental DNA as a tool for the detection of avian species.

ABSTRACT: Birds play unique functional roles in the maintenance of ecosystems, such as pollination and seed dispersal, and thus monitoring bird species diversity is a first step towards avoiding undesirable consequences of anthropogenic impacts on bird communities. In the present study, we hypothesized that birds, regardless of their main habitats, must have frequent contact with water and that tissues that contain their DNA that persists in the environment (environmental DNA; eDNA) could be used to detect the presence of avian species. To this end, we applied a set of universal PCR primers (MiBird, a modified version of fish/mammal universal primers) for metabarcoding avian eDNA. We confirmed the versatility of MiBird primers by performing in silico analyses and by amplifying DNAs extracted from bi

SUBMITTER: Ushio M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5851996 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature