RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Demonstration of the potential of environmental DNA as a tool for the detection of avian species
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 199208
DO 10.1101/199208
A1 Masayuki Ushio
A1 Koichi Murata
A1 Tetsuya Sado
A1 Isao Nishiumi
A1 Masamichi Takeshita
A1 Wataru Iwasaki
A1 Masaki Miya
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/06/199208.abstract
AB Birds play unique functional roles in the maintenance of ecosystems, such as pollina-tion and seed dispersal, and thus monitoring bird communities (e.g., monitoring bird species diversity) is a first step towards avoiding undesirable consequences of anthro-pogenic 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 bird tissues. Analyses of water samples from zoo cages of birds with known species composition suggested that the use of MiBird primers combined with the Il-lumina MiSeq platform could successfully detect avian species from water samples. Additionally, analysis of water samples collected from a natural pond detected five avian species common to the sampling areas. The present findings suggest that avian eDNA metabarcoding would be a complementary detection/identification tool in cases where visual detection and identification of bird species is difficult.