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42 results for “molecular diet”
Data from: Using molecular and crowd-sourcing methods to assess breeding ground diet of a migratory brood parasite of conservation concern
<p>Breeding ground food availability is critical to the survival and productivity of adult birds. The common cuckoo <i>Cuculus canorus</i> is a brood-parasitic Afro-Palearctic migrant bird exhibiting long-term (breeding) population declines in many European countries. Variation in population trend between regions and habitats suggests breeding ground drivers such as adult food supply. However, cuckoo diet has not been studied in detail since before the most significant population declines in Europe began in the mid-1980s. 20th century studies of cuckoo diet largely comprised field observations likely to carry bias towards larger prey taxa. Here we demonstrate the potential value of 1) using high-throughput DNA sequencing of invertebrate prey in faeces to determine cuckoo diet with minimal bias towards large prey taxa, and 2) using crowd-sourced digital photographs from across Britain to identify lepidopteran cuckoo prey taxa during recent years post-decline (2005-2016). DNA analysis found a high frequency of Lepidoptera, including moths of family Lasiocampidae, prominent within the past literature, but also grasshoppers (Orthoptera) and flies (Diptera) that may be overlooked by field observation methodologies. The range of larval lepidopteran prey identified from photographs largely agreed with those previously documented, with potential signs of reduced diversity, and identities of key adult prey taxa were supported by molecular results. Notably, many identified cuckoo prey taxa have shown severe declines due to agricultural intensification, suggesting this has driven spatial patterns of cuckoo loss. Landscape-scale, lowland rewilding interventions provide opportunities to understand the scale of reversal of previous agricultural intensification that may be necessary to restore prey populations sufficiently to permit recolonization by cuckoos.</p>
Molecular dietary analyses of western capercaillies (Tetrao urogallus) reveal a diverse diet
<p>Conservation strategies centred around species habitat protection rely on species' dietary information. One species at the focal point of conservation efforts is the herbivorous grouse, the western capercaillie (<i>Tetrao urogallus</i>), which is an indicator species for forest biodiversity conservation. Non-molecular means used to study their diet are time-consuming and at low taxonomic resolution. This delays the implementation of conservation strategies including resource protection due to uncertainty about its diet. Thus, limited knowledge on diet is hampering conservation efforts. Here we use non-invasive environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding on DNA extracted from faeces to present the first large-scale molecular dietary analysis of capercaillies. Faecal samples were collected from seven populations located in Norway (Finnmark, Troms, Trøndelag, Innlandet) and France (Vosges, Jura, Pyrenees) (n=172). We detected 122 plant taxa belonging to 46 plant families of which 37.7% of the detected taxa could be identified at species level. The average dietary richness of each sample was 7 ± 5 SD taxa. The most frequently occurring plant groups with the highest relative read abundance (RRA) were trees and dwarf shrubs, in particular, <i>Pinus</i> and <i>Vaccinium myrtillus</i>, respectively. There was a difference in dietary composition (RRA) between samples collected from the different locations (adonis pseudo F<sub>5,86</sub>= 11.01, <i>r<sup>2</sup></i> = 0.17, <i>p</i> = 0.001) and seasons (adonis pseudo F<sub>2,03</sub> = 0.64, <i>r<sup>2</sup></i> = 0.01, <i>p</i> = 0.036). Dietary composition also differed between sexes at each location (adonis pseudo F<sub>1,47</sub> = 2.77, <i>r<sup>2</sup></i> = 0.04, <i>p</i> = 0.024), although not significant for all data combined. In total, 35 taxa (36.8% of taxa recorded) were new capercaillie food items compared to existing knowledge from non-molecular means. The non-invasive molecular dietary analysis applied in this study provides new ecological information of capercaillies' diet, improving our understanding of adequate habitat required for their conservation.</p>
Dataset for "Structural and molecular indices in common carp (Cyprinus carpio L.) fed n-3 PUFA enriched diet. Food and Chemical Toxicology, 151, 112146."
<p>Dataset for "<strong><em>Eljasik P, Panicz R, Sobczak M, Sadowski J, Tórz A, Barbosa V, Marques A, Dias J. (2021). </em></strong><em>Structural and molecular indices in common carp (Cyprinus carpio L.) fed n-3 PUFA enriched diet. </em><strong><em>Food and Chemical Toxicology, 151, 112146. </em></strong><em>DOI: <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0278691521001794?via%3Dihub">doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2021.112146</a>"</em></p>
An invasive appetite: Combining molecular and stable isotope analyses to reveal the diet of introduced house mice (Mus musculus) on a small, subtropical island
<p>House mice (<em>Mus musculus</em>) pose a conservation threat on islands, where they adversely affect native species' distributions, densities, and persistence. On Sand Island of Kuaihelani, mice recently began to depredate nesting adult mōlī (Laysan Albatross, <em>Phoebastria immutabilis</em>). Efforts are underway to eradicate mice from Sand Island, but knowledge of mouse diet is needed to predict ecosystem response and recovery following mouse removal. We used next-generation sequencing to identify what mice eat on Sand Island, followed by stable isotope analysis to estimate the proportions contributed by taxa to mouse diet. We collected paired fecal and hair samples from 318 mice between April 2018 to May 2019; mice were trapped approximately every eight weeks among four distinct habitat types to provide insight into temporal and spatial variation. Sand Island's mice mainly consume arthropods, with nearly equal (but substantially smaller) contributions of C<sub>3 </sub>plants, C<sub>4</sub> plants, and mōlī. Although seabird tissue is a small portion of mouse diet, mice consume many detrital-feeding arthropods in and around seabird carcasses, such as isopods, flesh flies, ants, and cockroaches. Additionally, most arthropods and plants eaten by mice are non-native. Mouse diet composition differs among habitat types but changes minimally throughout the year, indicating that mice are not necessarily limited by food source availability or accessibility. Eradication of house mice may benefit seabirds on Sand Island, but it is unclear how arthropod and plant communities may respond and change. Non-native and invasive arthropods and plants previously consumed (and possibly suppressed) by mice may be released post-eradication, which could prevent recovery of native taxa. Comprehensive knowledge of target species' diet is a critical component of eradication planning. Dietary information should be used both to identify and to monitor which taxa may respond most strongly to invasive species removal and to assess if proactive, pre-eradication management activities are warranted.</p>
Molecular dietary analyses of western capercaillies (Tetrao urogallus) reveal a diverse diet
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An invasive appetite: Combining molecular and stable isotope analyses to reveal the diet of introduced house mice (Mus musculus) on a small, subtropical island
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Data from: Using molecular and crowd-sourcing methods to assess breeding ground diet of a migratory brood parasite of conservation concern
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Supplementary material 1 from: Lefort M-C, Beggs JR, Glare TR, Saunders TE, Doyle EJ, Boyer S (2020) A molecular approach to study Hymenoptera diets using wasp nests. NeoBiota 63: 57-79. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.63.58640
Figure S1. Data processing and number of reads and MOTUs retained or discarded at each step of the bioinformatics analysis
Data from: Molecular diet analysis finds an insectivorous desert bat community dominated by resource sharing despite diverse echolocation and foraging strategies
Interspecific differences in traits can alter the relative niche use of species within the same environment. Bats provide an excellent model to study niche use because they have a wide variety of behavioural, acoustic and morphological traits that may lead to multi-species, functional groups. Predatory bats have been classified by their foraging location (edge, clutter, open space), ability to aerial hawk and/or substrate glean prey and echolocation call design and flexibility, all of which may dictate their diet. For example, high frequency, broadband calls do not travel far but offer high object resolution while high intensity, low frequency calls travel further but provide lower resolution. Because these behaviours can be flexible four behavioural categories have been proposed: (1) gleaning, (2) behaviourally flexible (gleaning and hawking), (3) clutter tolerant hawking, and (4) open space hawking. Recent studies of diet in bats use molecular tools to identify prey but mainly focus on one or two species in isolation and few studies provide evidence for substantial differences in prey use despite the many behavioural, acoustic and morphological differences. Here we analyse the diet of 17 sympatric species in the Chihuahuan desert and test the hypothesis that peak echolocation frequency and behavioural categories are linked to differences in diet. We find no significant correlation between dietary richness and echolocation frequency (though it spanned close to 100kHz across species). However, our data suggest that behaviourally flexible bats that use gleaning and aerial hawking have the broadest diets and are the most differentiated from clutter-tolerant aerial hawking species.
Data from: Improving PCR detection of prey in molecular diet studies: importance of group-specific primer set selection and extraction protocol performances
While morphological identification of prey remains in feces of predators is the method most commonly used to study trophic interactions, many studies indicate that this method does not detect all consumed prey. Polymerase Chain Reaction based methods are increasingly used to detect prey DNA in the predator food bolus and have proved themselves efficient, with high accuracy. When studying complex diet samples, the extraction of total DNA is a critical step, as PCR inhibitors may be co-extracted. Another critical step consist in carefully select suitable group-specific primer sets that should only amplify prey DNA from the targeted taxon. In this study, the food boluses of five Rattus rattus and seven Rattus exulans were analyzed using both morphological and molecular methods. We tested a panel of 30 PCR specific primer sets targeting Bird, Invertebrate and Plant sequences and four were finally selected to be use as group-specific primer pairs in PCR protocols. The performances of four DNA extraction protocols (QIAamp DNA stool mini kit, DNeasy mericon food kit and two CTAB-based methods) were compared using four variables: DNA concentration, A260/A280 absorbance ratio, food compartment analyzed (stomach or fecal contents), total number of prey specific PCR amplification per sample. Our results clearly indicate that the A260/A280 absorbance ratio, which varies between extraction protocols, is positively correlated to the number of PCR amplifications of each prey taxon. We recommend using the DNeasy mericon food kit (Qiagen), which yielded results very similar to those achieved with the morphological approach.
A low molecular weight Saccharina japonica polysaccharide suppresses high fat diet-induced obesity and enriches gut bacteria with fucoidan-degrading potential
<p>This dataset contains 16S rRNA gene and metagenomic sequencing raw data involved in this study. Metagenomic data (S21H1887, S21H1888) were obtained from two cecal content samples from the LFD_J2H group due to<em> Akkermansia</em> uncultured bacterium was highly abundant in these samples. In addition, the code for JS divergence analysis is included.</p>
Data from: Large‐scale molecular diet analysis in a generalist marine mammal reveals male preference for prey of conservation concern
Sex‐specific diet information is important in the determination of predator impacts on prey populations. Unfortunately, the diet of males and females can be difficult to describe, particularly when they are marine predators. We combined two molecular techniques to describe haul‐out use and prey preferences of male and female harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) from Comox and Cowichan Bay (Canada) during 2012–2013. DNA metabarcoding quantified the diet proportions comprised of prey species in harbor seal scat, and qPCR determined the sex of the individual that deposited each scat. Using 287 female and 260 male samples, we compared the monthly sex ratio with GLMs and analyzed prey consumption relative to sex, season, site, and year with PERMANOVA. The sex ratio between monthly samples differed widely in both years (range = 12%–79% males) and showed different patterns at each haul‐out site. Male and female diet differed across both years and sites: Females consumed a high proportion of demersal fish species while males consumed more salmonid species. Diet composition was related to both sex and season (PERMANOVA: R2 = 27%, p < 0.001; R2 = 24%, p < 0.001, respectively) and their interaction (PERMANOVA: R2 = 11%, p < 0.001). Diet differences between males and females were consistent across site and year, suggesting fundamental foraging differences, including that males may have a larger impact on salmonids than females. Our novel combination of techniques allowed for both prey taxonomic and spatiotemporal resolution unprecedented in marine predators.
Data from: Molecular detection of invertebrate prey in vertebrate diets: trophic ecology of Caribbean island lizards
Understanding community assembly and population dynamics frequently requires detailed knowledge of food web structure. For many consumers, obtaining precise information about diet composition has traditionally required sacrificing animals or other highly invasive procedures, generating tension between maintaining intact study populations and knowing what they eat. We developed 16S mitochondrial DNA sequencing methods to identify arthropods in the diets of generalist vertebrate predators without requiring a blocking primer. We demonstrate the utility of these methods for a common Caribbean lizard that has been intensively studied in the context of small island food webs: Anolis sagrei (a semi-arboreal 'trunk-ground' anole ecomorph). Novel PCR primers were identified in silico and tested in vitro. Illumina sequencing successfully characterized the arthropod component of 168 faecal DNA samples collected during three field trips spanning 12 months, revealing 217 molecular operational taxonomic units (mOTUs) from at least nine arthropod orders (including Araneae, Blattodea, Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Isoptera, Lepidoptera and Orthoptera). Three mOTUs (one beetle, one cockroach and one ant) were particularly frequent, occurring in ≥50% of samples, but the majority of mOTUs were infrequent (180, or 83%, occurred in ≤5% of samples). Species accumulation curves showed that dietary richness and composition were similar between size-dimorphic sexes; however, female lizards had greater per-sample dietary richness than males. Overall diet composition (but not richness) was significantly different across seasons, and we found more pronounced interindividual variation in December than in May. These methods will be generally useful in characterizing the diets of diverse insectivorous vertebrates.
Data from: Using molecular diet analysis to inform invasive species management: a case study of introduced rats consuming endemic New Zealand frogs
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Data from: Molecular diet analysis finds an insectivorous desert bat community dominated by resource sharing despite diverse echolocation and foraging strategies
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Improving PCR detection of prey in molecular diet studies: importance of group-specific primer set selection and extraction protocol performances
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Molecular detection of invertebrate prey in vertebrate diets: trophic ecology of Caribbean island lizards
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Data from: Combining stable isotopes, morphological, and molecular analyses to reconstruct the diet of free-ranging consumers
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Data from: Large‐scale molecular diet analysis in a generalist marine mammal reveals male preference for prey of conservation concern
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Supplementary material 2 from: Lefort M-C, Beggs JR, Glare TR, Saunders TE, Doyle EJ, Boyer S (2020) A molecular approach to study Hymenoptera diets using wasp nests. NeoBiota 63: 57-79. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.63.58640
Figure S2. Percentage identity for all prey MOTUs and only Lepidoptera
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.