When Wildlife Eat Poisonous Plants: What to Watch For & How Rapid DNA Testing Can HelpImagine a small group of endangered rhinos has just been reintroduced to a protected valley. The release plan looks perfect on paper: good grass cover, reliable water, minimal risk of poaching or other human disturbances. Then, within days, several animals begin showing classic gut-pain behaviors: repeatedly lying down and getting back up, pawing at the ground, rolling around. A field team notices profuse salivation in one animal and diarrhea in another.
Now the clock is running. In animals like rhinos, with large ‘hindgut fermenting’ digestive systems, the effects of plant toxins can move from subtle to catastrophic quickly. To save these animals, to make sure others don’t get sick, and to protect the future of the rewilding initiative we can’t take a risk in guessing what kind of treatment might work—we have to quickly figure out what, exactly, they have been eating. That’s where any preparation to enable rapid dietary testing can help guide our response in real time. Emerging strategies that enable rapid DNA testing to minimize the economically costly loss of livestock are becoming highly effective and scalable—they are about to spill over into the wildlife sector where they can help bolster conservation initiatives as well. We anticipate this could become especially important for wildlife translocation and reintroduction programs, where animals are presented an array of unfamiliar foods that their systems are not accustomed to.
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Biodiversity credits: where markets meet monitoring, DNA reference libraries are a high-leverage investmentBiodiversity credits are moving quickly from concept notes to implementation—and East African savannas are where some of the hardest questions are being tested. The promise is simple: markets can channel finance toward measurable, verifiable biodiversity outcomes at landscape scales. But the challenge is just as clear: unlike with carbon credits, biodiversity "units" can be counted in so many ways. Since a credit is only as credible as the monitoring behind it, a theme that keeps emerging from technical and policy discussions involves trying to figure out whether DNA-powered approaches can help. In principle, any DNA we detect in the environment can help make biodiversity surveys more reliable and harder to game. But all DNA-based approaches rely on unseen infrastructure that most people never consider: reference DNA libraries that must be constructed based on verifiably identified specimens. When biodiversity targets are poorly covered by these libraries, even the most sophisticated survey methods can collapse into reports that are frustratingly full of "unknowns." That message came through repeatedly at recent meetings in Nairobi, Kenya. Last week, Dr. Mary Burak (Senior Postdoc, Genomic Opportunities Lab) attended both the Business for Conservation Conference and the Global Conservation Technology & Drone Forum. A recurring question she encountered in conversations with practitioners, business leaders, and researchers went like this: what would it take to use DNA as "creditable" in savanna biodiversity programs—and who is going to build the databases we need to get there? What would it take to make DNA evidence "creditable" in savanna biodiversity programs—and who is going to build the databases we need to get there? Because translating complex biodiversity data into actionable information is one of our team's core strengths, we wanted to share this post as a practical summary of the field. We will outline how biodiversity credits work, how programs affecting East African savannas are typically structured, and when DNA can add real value. You will discover that DNA reference libraries are currently an undervalued and high-leverage investment that savvy leaders are making—they recognize that you can't make DNA creditable without it.
The key question we reveal for anyone who wants to participate in this market: what is the return on investment you can expect from building the reference libraries that underpin success—and how long will it take for the investment to increase the value of your monitoring services or offset programs? Metabarcoding vs. Metagenomics: Two Ways to Decode Diets and Microbiomes
Metabarcoding Versus Direct Observation in Wildlife Diet Studies
Metabarcoding vs. Stable Isotopes: Two Ways to See What Animals Eat
From Data to Decisions: A Theory of Change for Conservation Science
Reconstructing 10,000 Years of Caribou Diets from Melting Yukon Ice Patches
Metabarcoding vs Microhistology: Comparing Dietary Analysis Methods
Story behind the science: Yellowstone wildlife dietsRethinking how we classify animals based on what they eat—and what it means for wildlife management An article by science journalist Livi Milloway chronicles an "ah-ha" moment we had in our Yellowstone National Park research project. The story published in The Wildlife Society Bulletin, titled An herbivore by any other name, unpacks how Hannah Hoff's recent paper in PNAS challenges the status quo when it comes to how scientists study and understand wildlife diets.
Research highlight: Apportionment of Dietary Diversity in Wildlife published in PNAS (Hannah Hoff et al.)
Interview: DNA barcoding and conservation (Mongabay)DNA sequencing to meet global biodiversity goals: Interview with Tyler Kartzinel Tyler sat down for an interview with Abhishyant Kidangoor of Mongabay to discuss our recent Mini Review in Molecular Ecology, entitled Global Availability of Plant DNA Barcodes as Genomic Resources to Support Basic and Policy-Relevant Biodiversity Research.
You can read our conversation here at Mongabay. It covers topics that are among the most important for ensuring the reliability of DNA-based biodiversity research, including equitable access to the benefits arising from this technology and the reputations of all who use it. The work was also highlighted in Spanish by El Mostrador: Código de barras de plantas: herramienta genética clave que busca ser fortalecida en el sur global Research highlight: giraffe diets and microbiomes (Videvall et al.)
Research highlight: what fuels wildlife migrations across Yellowstone?
Research highlight: News & Views published in Molecular Ecology (Bethan Littleford-Colquhoun et al.)Led by Bethan Littleford-Colquhoun, the Kartzinel Lab published a strong, thoughtful, and evidence-based reply to an earlier comment in Molecular Ecology: Evidence-based strategies to navigate the complexity of dietary DNA.
The take-home: there are a lot of challenges and opportunities when it comes to using dietary DNA metabarcoding strategies to advance a variety of important research agendas; Beth is leading the way when it comes to clear-thinking about how we conduct our studies and how we can strengthen the evidence we use to support our conclusions. Research highlight: review about dietary DNA published in Molecular Ecology (Bethan Littleford-Coluqhoun et al.)The Kartzinel Lab led an Open Access review in Molecular Ecology to help you avoid one of the most common mistakes we see in dietary DNA metabarcoding studies. Learn about why "abundance thresholds" may not always be appropriate to use in bioinformatic pipelines, and how to be careful about interpreting them when they are used. Our paper -- The precautionary principle and dietary DNA metabarcoding: commonly used abundance thresholds change ecological interpretation -- was highlighted by the Editorial Board of Molecular Ecology for its contribution to key discussions on this important topic.
Papers on diet-microbiome linkages in humans and wildlife published in tandem
Research highlight: paper featured on the cover of Nature (Robert Pringle et al.)
Feature: Tyler Kartzinel's research as an HHMI textbook example Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) just released a “BioInteractive” lab featuring our research on the diets of savanna herbivores.
Research highlight: experimental work to rewild sick lab mice published (Sarah Budischak et al.)The full text of an exciting paper featuring dietary DNA metabarcoding work in collaboration with the Kartzinel Lab was published: Feeding immunity: physiological and behavioral responses to infection and resource limitation. The article appears in a special feature of Frontiers in Immunology entitled Wild immunity -- the answers are out there.
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