Drinking water as a source of environmental DNA for the detection of terrestrial wildlife species
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METHODS AND RESOURCES ARTICLE
Drinking water as a source of environmental DNA for the detection of terrestrial wildlife species Torrey W. Rodgers1 • Karen E. Mock1
Received: 14 March 2015 / Accepted: 29 June 2015 / Published online: 17 July 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract Use of environmental DNA for wildlife species detection is a field of research that has seen rapid growth in recent years, however, the majority of research to date has been focused on aquatic species. Here, we propose and test a novel source for the detection of terrestrial species with environmental DNA: drinking water from watering holes and wildlife water developments. We hypothesized that when terrestrial animals drink from a water source, DNA from saliva and buccal cells is shed and can be isolated for species identification. We tested this hypothesis in a pilot study by filtering drinking water supplied to coyotes (Canis latrans) at a captive coyote research facility. DNA was successfully extracted from filters, amplified by the polymerase chain reaction, and sequenced, and sequences were positively identified as belonging to coyotes. We believe this environmental DNA based approach holds great promise for the detection of terrestrial species of conservation concern. Keywords
Canis latrans Coyote eDNA
Introduction Use of environmental DNA (eDNA), DNA collected from the environment without having to handle or observe target species, has increased dramatically in recent years for the
& Torrey W. Rodgers [email protected] 1
Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University, 5230 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322, USA
detection of rare, elusive, invasive, or threatened and endangered wildlife species (Bohmann et al. 2014; Taberlet et al. 2012a; Thomsen and Willerslev 2015). The vast majority of wildlife eDNA research to date however, has been focused on aquatic or semi-aquatic species (Ficetola et al. 2008; Goldberg et al. 2015; Piaggio et al. 2014; Thomsen et al. 2012). This is because in aquatic species, eDNA becomes suspended in the water column, and is thus relatively easy to isolate through filtration. Restricting eDNA research to aquatic species greatly limits its scope for conservation, and thus there is a need for creative new methods to gather eDNA from terrestrial species as well. Researchers have long used DNA from noninvasive sources such as scat or hair for terrestrial species detection (Hoss et al. 1992; Rodgers and Janecˇka 2013; Waits and Paetkau 2005), but this requires the use of hair snares, or the ability to locate scat. Species identification from terrestrial predator wounds has also been successful (Williams et al. 2003). Other recent studies have successfully collected terrestrial wildlife species eDNA from browsed twigs (Nichols et al. 2012), soil (Andersen et al. 2012) leeches (Schnell et al. 2012), and carrion-flies (CalvignacSpencer et al. 2013; Schubert et al. 2014). In this study, we propose an additional source of terrestrial wildlife species eDNA: drinking water
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