Biodiversity capsules give valuable data on elusive species

Biodiversity capsules give valuable data on elusive species

What goes in must come out, and for Dr Stephane Boyer what comes out can tell ecologists a lot, especially about threatened, endangered and even new species.

As part of his recent work for Lincoln University Dr Boyer inventoried the species present in the vicinity of the Stockton Mine on the West Coast, and after moving 2400 kilograms of soil in the process he is advocating a less labour intensive method.

He says with advances in DNA techniques testing on predator droppings in difficult to access environments, such as bush areas, can reveal a lot about predator and prey.

Dr Boyer calls the dung “biodiversity capsules”.

His team sorted 1500 earthworms at Stockton. They missed three species of earthworms that were predated by the carnivorous land snail in the area and whose DNA was picked up from simply testing the faeces of the snails.

The same technique could be used to study prey communities predated by bats, birds, fish, or beetles.

‘’It is now possible to sequence mixed DNA samples and identify every species present in the diet of a given predator,’’ he says.

Because predators have evolved to find their prey efficiently, their faeces can contain prey species which would have been difficult to collect using conventional sampling methods.

Collecting the faeces can be done rapidly, easily and inexpensively, he says.
He says developing novel tools to better assess biodiversity is crucial to the discovery of new and cryptic species (animals that appear identical but are genetically quite distinct), and the monitoring and conservation of endangered and declining species.

With new species documented every day, many may disappear before they are even discovered.

Some are very difficult to detect or study because they are very small, or are at low density in remote or impenetrable habitats. This includes soil invertebrates, species
inhabiting deep seas and small and rare flying insects.

He adds the method causes minimum interference to native ecosystems and does not require extensive trapping, which can be labour intensive and could kill many individuals of non-target species.

He thinks it may also spark some citizen science projects where the public can contribute by collecting droppings of an elusive species and sending them to researchers for analysis.

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