Alberts Carlos C, Saranholi Bruno H, Frei Fernando, Galetti Pedro M
LEvEtho (Laboratory of Evolution and Ethology), Faculdade de Ciências e Letras de Assis, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Assis, State of São Paulo, Brazil.
LabBMC (Laboratório de Biodiversidade Molecular e Conservação), Departamento de Genética e Evolução, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos, State of São Paulo, Brazil.
PLoS One. 2017 Sep 7;12(9):e0184073. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184073. eCollection 2017.
To avoid certain problems encountered with more-traditional and invasive methods in behavioral-ecology studies of mammalian predators, such as felids, molecular approaches have been employed to identify feces found in the field. However, this method requires a complete molecular biology laboratory, and usually also requires very fresh fecal samples to avoid DNA degradation. Both conditions are normally absent in the field. To address these difficulties, identification based on morphological characters (length, color, banding, scales and medullar patterns) of hairs found in feces could be employed as an alternative. In this study we constructed a morphological identification key for guard hairs of eight Neotropical felids (jaguar, oncilla, Geoffroy's cat, margay, ocelot, Pampas cat, puma and jaguarundi) and compared its efficiency to that of a molecular identification method, using the ATP6 region as a marker. For this molecular approach, we simulated some field conditions by postponing sample-conservation procedures. A blind test of the identification key obtained a nearly 70% overall success rate, which we considered equivalent to or better than the results of some molecular methods (probably due to DNA degradation) found in other studies. The jaguar, puma and jaguarundi could be unequivocally discriminated from any other Neotropical felid. On a scale ranging from inadequate to excellent, the key proved poor only for the margay, with only 30% of its hairs successfully identified using this key; and have intermediate success rates for the remaining species, the oncilla, Geoffroy's cat, ocelot and Pampas cat, were intermediate. Complementary information about the known distributions of felid populations may be necessary to substantially improve the results obtained with the key. Our own molecular results were even better, since all blind-tested samples were correctly identified. Part of these identifications were made from samples kept in suboptimal conditions, with some samples remaining outdoors for up to seven days, simulating conditions in the field. It appears that both methods can be used, depending on the available laboratory facilities and on the expected results.
为避免在诸如猫科动物等哺乳动物捕食者行为生态学研究中使用更传统和侵入性方法时遇到某些问题，分子方法已被用于鉴定在野外发现的粪便。然而，这种方法需要一个完整的分子生物学实验室，并且通常还需要非常新鲜的粪便样本以避免DNA降解。这两个条件在野外通常都不具备。为解决这些困难，可以采用基于粪便中发现的毛发形态特征（长度、颜色、条纹、鳞片和髓质模式）的鉴定方法作为替代。在本研究中，我们构建了一个针对八种新热带猫科动物（美洲虎、小斑虎猫、乔氏猫、长尾虎猫、豹猫、潘帕斯猫、美洲狮和美洲草原猫）的保护毛的形态鉴定检索表，并将其效率与使用ATP6区域作为标记的分子鉴定方法进行比较。对于这种分子方法，我们通过推迟样本保存程序来模拟一些野外条件。对鉴定检索表进行的盲测获得了近70%的总体成功率，我们认为这等同于或优于其他研究中发现的一些分子方法的结果（可能是由于DNA降解）。美洲虎、美洲狮和美洲草原猫可以与任何其他新热带猫科动物明确区分开来。在从不充分到优秀的范围内，该检索表仅对长尾虎猫效果不佳，使用此检索表仅成功鉴定出其30%的毛发；其余物种，小斑虎猫、乔氏猫、豹猫和潘帕斯猫的成功率处于中等水平。可能需要有关猫科动物种群已知分布的补充信息，以大幅提高使用该检索表获得的结果。我们自己的分子结果甚至更好，因为所有经过盲测的样本都被正确鉴定。这些鉴定中的一部分是基于保存在非最佳条件下的样本进行的，一些样本在户外放置了长达七天，模拟野外条件。似乎这两种方法都可以使用，这取决于可用的实验室设施和预期结果。
