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Snow leopard diet determined by DNA analysis of fecal samples

2012-03-01
(Press-News.org) Knowledge about animal diet can inform conservation strategy, but this information can be difficult to gather. A new DNA-based method, which analyzes genetic material from feces, could be a useful tool, and researchers have shown its utility to characterize the diet of snow leopards in Mongolia.

The full results are reported Feb. 29 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Analysis of DNA from 81 fecal samples showed that the leopards ate mostly Siberian ibex, followed by domestic goats and wild sheep. Most of the animals eaten were wild (79 %), with a relatively low proportion of domestic livestock (19.7 %). The authors, led by Pierre Taberlet of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, write that the results help further the understanding of snow leopard feeding, which can help address related conservation and management issues.

INFORMATION:

Citation: Shehzad W, McCarthy TM, Pompanon F, Purevjav L, Coissac E, et al. (2012) Prey Preference of Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) in South Gobi, Mongolia. PLoS ONE 7(2): e32104. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032104

Contact: Dr. Pierre Taberlet (pierre.taberlet@ujf-grenoble.fr) +33 476 63 54 33 (France), Mobile: +33 680 85 69 26 (France), or Thomas Michael McCarthy (tmccarthy@panthera.org) 206-384-2147 (US)

Financial Disclosure: This work was funded by Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine, UMR 5553, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France. Partial funding was provided by Snow Leopard Conservation Grant Program for 2010. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of this manuscript.

Competing Interest: EC, TR and PT are co-inventors of a pending French patent application entitled ''Amorces universelles et leurutilisation pour la de´tection et l'identification d'espe`ces deverte´bre´ s'' which has been submitted in France on 26 May 2011. Reference number: FR 11/54606, on the primer pair named 12SV5F and 12SV5R and on the use of the amplified fragment for identifying vertebrate species from environmental samples. This patent only restricts commercial applications and has no impact on the use of this method by academic researchers. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Disclaimer: This press release refers to upcoming articles in PLoS ONE. The releases have been provided by the article authors and/or journal staff. Any opinions expressed in these are the personal views of the contributors, and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of PLoS. PLoS expressly disclaims any and all warranties and liability in connection with the information found in the release and article and your use of such information.

About PLoS ONE

PLoS ONE is the first journal of primary research from all areas of science to employ a combination of peer review and post-publication rating and commenting, to maximize the impact of every report it publishes. PLoS ONE is published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the open-access publisher whose goal is to make the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource.

All works published in PLoS ONE are Open Access. Everything is immediately available—to read, download, redistribute, include in databases and otherwise use—without cost to anyone, anywhere, subject only to the condition that the original authors and source are properly attributed. For more information about PLoS ONE relevant to journalists, bloggers and press officers, including details of our press release process and our embargo policy, see the everyONE blog at http://everyone.plos.org/media.

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[Press-News.org] Snow leopard diet determined by DNA analysis of fecal samples