Novel detection of provenance in the illegal wildlife trade using elemental data.

ABSTRACT: Despite being the fourth largest criminal market in the world, no forensic tools have been sufficiently developed to accurately determine the legal status of seized animals and their parts. Although legal trading is permissible for farmed or captive-bred animals, many animals are illegally removed from the wild and laundered by masquerading them as captive bred. Here we present high-resolution x-ray fluorescence (XRF) as a non-invasive and cost-effective tool for forensic classification. We tested the efficacy of this technique by using machine learning on a training set of zoo specimens and wild-caught individuals of short-beaked echidnas (Tachyglossus aculeatus), a small insectivorous monotreme in Australia. XRF outperformed stable isotope analysis (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N), red

SUBMITTER: Brandis KJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6194005 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature