State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution and Yunnan Key Laboratory of Biodiversity and Ecological Security of Gaoligong Mountain, Kunming Institute of Zoology, 650223, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
Museum of Comparative Zoology and Department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA.
Nat Commun. 2022 Mar 23;13(1):1555. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28778-8.
Protected areas are key to meeting biodiversity conservation goals, but direct measures of effectiveness have proven difficult to obtain. We address this challenge by using environmental DNA from leech-ingested bloodmeals to estimate spatially-resolved vertebrate occupancies across the 677 km Ailaoshan reserve in Yunnan, China. From 30,468 leeches collected by 163 park rangers across 172 patrol areas, we identify 86 vertebrate species, including amphibians, mammals, birds and squamates. Multi-species occupancy modelling shows that species richness increases with elevation and distance to reserve edge. Most large mammals (e.g. sambar, black bear, serow, tufted deer) follow this pattern; the exceptions are the three domestic mammal species (cows, sheep, goats) and muntjak deer, which are more common at lower elevations. Vertebrate occupancies are a direct measure of conservation outcomes that can help guide protected-area management and improve the contributions that protected areas make towards global biodiversity goals. Here, we show the feasibility of using invertebrate-derived DNA to estimate spatially-resolved vertebrate occupancies across entire protected areas.
保护地是实现生物多样性保护目标的关键，但直接衡量其有效性一直具有挑战性。我们通过使用从吸血蚂蟥摄入的血液中提取的环境 DNA 来解决这一挑战，以估算中国云南哀牢山保护区 677 公里范围内的脊椎动物的空间占有率。我们从 163 名公园管理员在 172 个巡逻区收集的 30468 只蚂蟥中，鉴定出 86 种脊椎动物，包括两栖动物、哺乳动物、鸟类和爬行动物。多物种占有率模型表明，物种丰富度随海拔和与保护区边缘的距离增加而增加。大多数大型哺乳动物（如马鹿、黑熊、鬣羚、毛冠鹿）都遵循这一模式；例外的是三种家养哺乳动物（牛、羊、山羊）和麂，它们在较低海拔地区更为常见。脊椎动物占有率是衡量保护成果的直接指标，可以帮助指导保护区管理，并提高保护区对全球生物多样性目标的贡献。在这里，我们展示了使用无脊椎动物衍生 DNA 来估算整个保护区内的空间分辨率脊椎动物占有率的可行性。
