DNA recovered from polar bear snowprints could shed light on elusive species

Polar bears are tough animals to track. Scientists must brave frigid Arctic landscapes to observe them, if they can spot them at all. And if they want to collect genetic information, they often have to dart and capture the animals—a risky proposition for both researcher and bear. A new approach may lend a paw to such efforts. In two new studies, scientists report that they can identify individual polar bears from the DNA of skin cells left in their snowy pawprints. One of the papers claims the same results in two other elusive animals: lynx and snow leopards. The work could help researchers monitor these and other hard-to-study creatures relatively easily and cheaply, potentially aiding conservation efforts. Both studies rely on DNA collected not directly from an animal, but from bits of dead skin shed in its surroundings. Scientists have recovered this so-called environmental DNA (eDNA) from water, soil, and air to study everything from marine populations to reptile abundance. They’ve even collected it from footprints. But they’ve never been able to trace the DNA back to a single member of a population. One study, published this summer in Frontiers in Conservation Science , does just that. The team of researchers used a trowel to shave 1 to 2 centimeters of snow from the surface of 130 polar bear prints left near Alaska’s North Slope. They found they could isolate nuclear DNA—the main DNA in a cell—in 46% of the samples, ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research