Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, 610 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Oct 29;14(1):26027. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-76149-8.
Established invasive species represent one of the most harmful and challenging threats to native biodiversity, necessitating methods for Early Detection and Rapid Response. Cryptic invasions are particularly challenging and often require expensive and time-consuming molecular surveys which limits their usefulness for management. We present a novel application of the Fluidigm SNP-Type Assay to identify rare non-native alleles that significantly reduces the cost and time to generate diagnostic results. We demonstrate the efficacy of this method using experimental Fluidigm pools (99% accuracy) and sequence data (96% accuracy). We apply our novel methodology to an endangered population of California tiger salamanders in Sonoma County where two individual non-native tiger salamander hybrids have previously been detected since 2008. We screened 5805 larvae in 387 sample-pools containing 15 larvae each. We did not detect any non-native hybrids in the population, a result that was verified with sequence data, though we strongly recommend additional years of sampling to confirm hybrid absence. Our success with a challenging, large-genome amphibian suggests this method may be applied to any system, and would be particularly useful when it is necessary for conservation practitioners to rapidly identify rare taxa or genes of interest.
已建立的入侵物种是对本地生物多样性最具危害性和挑战性的威胁之一，因此需要采用早期发现和快速响应的方法。隐匿性入侵尤其具有挑战性，通常需要昂贵且耗时的分子调查，这限制了它们在管理中的实用性。我们提出了一种新颖的 Fluidigm SNP-Type 分析应用，用于鉴定罕见的非本地等位基因，从而显著降低生成诊断结果的成本和时间。我们使用实验性的 Fluidigm 池（准确率为 99%）和序列数据（准确率为 96%）证明了该方法的有效性。我们将我们的新方法应用于加利福尼亚州索诺玛县濒危的虎斑蝾螈种群中，自 2008 年以来，那里已经发现了两个非本地虎斑蝾螈杂种个体。我们在包含 15 个幼虫的 387 个样本池中筛选了 5805 个幼虫。我们没有在该种群中发现任何非本地杂种，这一结果通过序列数据得到了验证，尽管我们强烈建议增加几年的采样来确认杂种的不存在。我们在具有挑战性的大型基因组两栖动物方面取得的成功表明，该方法可应用于任何系统，对于保护工作者来说，当需要快速识别稀有类群或感兴趣的基因时，该方法特别有用。
