Centre for Compassionate Conservation, School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia.
Animalfree Research, Postgasse 15, 3011 Bern, Switzerland.
Genes (Basel). 2021 Oct 23;12(11):1672. doi: 10.3390/genes12111672.
Wildlife research has been indispensable for increasing our insight into ecosystem functioning as well as for designing effective conservation measures under the currently high rates of biodiversity loss. Genetic and genomic analyses might be able to yield the same information on, e.g., population size, health, or diet composition as other wildlife research methods, and even provide additional data that would not be possible to obtain by alternative means. Moreover, if DNA is collected non-invasively, this technique has only minimal or no impact on animal welfare. Nevertheless, the implementation rate of noninvasive genetic assessment in wildlife studies has been rather low. This might be caused by the perceived inefficiency of DNA material obtained non-invasively in comparison with DNA obtained from blood or tissues, or poorer performance in comparison with other approaches used in wildlife research. Therefore, the aim of this review was to evaluate the performance of noninvasive genetic assessment in comparison with other methods across different types of wildlife studies. Through a search of three scientific databases, 113 relevant studies were identified, published between the years 1997 and 2020. Overall, most of the studies (94%) reported equivalent or superior performance of noninvasive genetic assessment when compared with either invasive genetic sampling or another research method. It might be also cheaper and more time-efficient than other techniques. In conclusion, noninvasive genetic assessment is a highly effective research approach, whose efficacy and performance are likely to improve even further in the future with the development of optimized protocols.
野生动物研究对于增加我们对生态系统功能的了解以及在当前生物多样性丧失率较高的情况下设计有效的保护措施是不可或缺的。遗传和基因组分析可能能够提供与其他野生动物研究方法相同的信息，例如种群规模、健康或饮食组成，甚至提供通过其他手段无法获得的额外数据。此外，如果 DNA 是通过非侵入性方法收集的，那么这种技术对动物福利的影响最小或没有。然而，非侵入性遗传评估在野生动物研究中的实施率一直相当低。这可能是由于与从血液或组织中获得的 DNA 相比，非侵入性获得的 DNA 材料被认为效率较低，或者与在野生动物研究中使用的其他方法相比，表现较差。因此，本综述的目的是评估非侵入性遗传评估与不同类型的野生动物研究中的其他方法相比的性能。通过对三个科学数据库的搜索，确定了 113 项相关研究，这些研究发表于 1997 年至 2020 年之间。总体而言，大多数研究（94%）报告称，与侵入性遗传采样或另一种研究方法相比，非侵入性遗传评估的性能相当或更优。它也可能比其他技术更便宜、更省时。总之，非侵入性遗传评估是一种非常有效的研究方法，随着优化方案的发展，其功效和性能很可能在未来进一步提高。
