Journal article
Koalas, friends and foes—The application of airborne eDNA for the biomonitoring of threatened species
Journal of Applied Ecology, Vol.61(11), pp.2837-2847
2024
Abstract
Curbing global wildlife population declines will necessitate the protection of their habitat, and subsequent robust baseline information about wildlife that use and occupy it. Collating such information, however, remains a challenging and costly endeavour. Little did we know that traces of wildlife presence float in the air and can be detected through traces of DNA.
Here, we deployed samplers to test the applicability of collecting airborne eDNA for the detection of a threatened species, the koala, and its co-occurring terrestrial mammalian community.
We develop a novel species specific qPCR assay to detect the presence of koalas and applied this in concert with a meta-barcoding approach to detect the co-occurring mammalian community.
Through sampling of airborne particles, we successfully detected koala presence accurately to habitat patch level, alongside 16 unique taxonomic assignments, successfully assigning 11 of these to species level including detections belonging to the wallaby, antechinus, members of possum family and invasive species such as foxes, domestic dogs and hares.
Synthesis and applications: We demonstrate the potential of airborne eDNA for the detection of threatened terrestrial wildlife and their surrounding ecological community under natural conditions. With achievable optimisations we detail how airborne eDNA may be applied for the management and monitoring of threated species for enhanced conservation efforts.
Details
- Title
- Koalas, friends and foes—The application of airborne eDNA for the biomonitoring of threatened species
- Authors
- Celine Frere - The University of QueenslandNicola Jackson - The University of QueenslandJarred Moreno - The University of QueenslandAlejandro Oliveros Sandino - The University of QueenslandSarah Ball - The University of QueenslandDaniel Powell - The University of Queensland
- Publication details
- Journal of Applied Ecology, Vol.61(11), pp.2837-2847
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
- Date published
- 2024
- DOI
- 10.1111/1365-2664.14784
- ISSN
- 1365-2664
- Copyright note
- © 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Applied Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Data Availability
- All raw sequencing data are deposited on NCBI Genbank Bioproject accession PRJNA949380 (Frere et al., 2024b). Code and supporting data including amplicon sequence variants are available via the Dryad Digital Repository https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.05qfttfbs (Frere et al., 2024a).
- Grant note
- Redland City Council.
- Organisation Unit
- Centre for Bioinnovation
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991234802302621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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