Behind the paper: eDNA has great potential as a wildlife survey tool, but should be used properly

As many people know, two of my favourite topics are bandicoots and environmental DNA (eDNA). So I’m very excited about the online debut of my latest paper “A framework for developing and validating taxon-specific primers for specimen identification from environmental DNA” at Molecular Ecology Resources, which includes both bandicoots and eDNA. eDNA analysis is the analysis of DNA…

What We’re Reading: Jan 29, 2016

Improving morphological diet studies with molecular ecology I’m sure you all know by now that many wildlife species are threatened by invasive predators. Diet studies are often used to understand the specific impacts of predators, to guide management actions. Traditionally, this has meant sorting through scats and gut contents to identify as many prey remains as possible. Of…

What we’re reading: Oct 31, 2014

SNPits Publications Congrats to SNPits writers Emily and Stephanie on new publications released this work. Emily’s work (open) estimates the population size of black bears (Ursus americanus) in Missouri. But more importantly, the paper shows how design of trap array experiments can influence mark-recapture population size estimates. Stephanie’s work (open) details how variation in raccoon…